Summertime(2016)

Plot Summary

• Delphine Benchiessa (Izïa Higelin) is the only child of French farmers who enjoys working the land with her parents. Though her father Maurice (Jean-Henri Compère) wants her to marry, Delphine is secretly pursuing a relationship with another local girl. When she goes to a rendez-vous with her girlfriend she is informed that her girlfriend intends to marry a local boy, dismissing the relationship between her and Delphine as "not serious". Delphine then runs away to Paris (revealing here that the year is 1971).While walking down the street Delphine encounters a group of women running down the street pinching men's buttocks. When one of them attacks a woman, Delphine helps extract her and learns that her name is Carole (Cécile de France). Carole and the other women belong to a feminist group focused on women's liberation. They encourage Delphine to join and she begins to participate in their protests. When one of the group members learns that her best friend, a gay man, has been committed to a mental institution by his family and is being given electroshock therapy, the rest of the group refuses to help her extract him. Delphine on the other hand successfully argues that they should help to free him, and is part of a group of women, along with Carole, who successfully free him. The night, Delphine suddenly kisses Carole who is surprised and rejects her. The next day Carole tells Delphine that she is not a lesbian, but the two wind up in a passionate embrace and begin an affair. Carole initially believes that it is a one night stand, but quickly develops feelings for Delphine. She tells her boyfriend of the affair and the two struggle to work out their relationship even as Carole continues to see Delphine.Delphine receives a phone call from her mother Monique (Noémie Lvovsky) that her father has had a heart attack. Delphine goes to visit them and realizes that she must stay in order to help run the farm. Taking some of the lessons she has learned in the feminist collective she represents her parents' interest with the farmers. Carole goes to visit her and decides that she cannot live without her. Taking a break from her boyfriend she returns to the countryside but is surprised to learn that she and Delphine must remain discreet and closeted as they are still living with Delphine's mother who does not know her daughter is gay.Over the next several weeks, Carole initially enjoys country life and works the land with Delphine and her mother. However she finds the people confining as they mock her left-wing politics and she finds it frustrating she is unable to openly be with Delphine the way she was in Paris. She also begins to have doubts about Delphine's intentions after Antoine (Kévin Azaïs), a local boy in love with Delphine, tells her that Delphine will never leave the farm and Delphine's mother tells Carole that Antoine intends to marry Delphine. Carole begins fighting with Delphine which results in several people learning Delphine's secret including a local farmer who sees them kissing, and her mother who overhears them arguing.The following morning Delphine's mother walks in on Carole and Delphine in bed. Though she acts like everything is normal with Delphine she tells Carole to leave her home, accusing her of having perverted her daughter before attacking her. Carole tells Delphine she is leaving and Delphine decides to run away to be with Carole. Though they leave on the train together, Delphine finds herself unable to leave. She decides to miss their connecting train to Paris and returns home.Five Years Later; 1976Carole is working at a women's health clinic in Paris and is in a relationship with another woman. She receives a letter from Delphine who writes to tell her that she has finally left her parents' farm and now has one of her own in Southern France. She tells Carole that she regrets not leaving with her five years earlier but she understands that it is impossible to turn back time.

Storyline

• There was little chance, in the year 1971, that Carole, a Paris Spanish teacher and feminist militant, would ever meet Delphine, the daughter of a couple of Limousin farmers. But they did meet and not only did they come across each other but they fell passionately in love as well. Unfortunately, Delphine's father fell victim to a stroke, and the young woman had no other choice but to go back home to help her mother run the family farm. Carole, who was so smitten by Delphine, couldn't stand the estrangement and decided to join her lover at the farm. But could feminism and lesbianism easily be transferred to the countryside and its standards of the time...? — Guy Bellinger Delphine (Higelin) is a twenty-something farm girl of humble means who moves to the big city of Paris in the turbulent 1970s, searching for her independence. It's not long before she is drawn to dynamic thirty-something Carole (de France), who is actively involved in the emerging feminist movement.