Berlin. On a beautiful summer day, 30-year-old Sasha collapses in a park. Dead. Just like that. No warning signs. Leaving her American boyfriend Lawrence (Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie, seen in Bergman’s Island and Paul Greengrass’ 22 July) and her sister Zoé (Judith Chemla, In the Name of my Daughter, C’est La Vie!) devastated. Over three consecutive summers, they will get closer, sharing the burden of their grief and developing reciprocal support, maybe more, to numb the pain and to hopefully, find some kind of closure. The length of time necessary for them to heal in some ways, to accept the unacceptable, for the light to return, the sorrow to fade, their resilience to strengthen. Carried by the memory of their loved one and with Berlin, Annecy, Paris and New York as backdrops, the pair goes wandering.

How to deal with death and loss is a theme that has been explored in countless ways and many variations in literature and cinema. But, for his sophomore film, French director Mikhaël Hers (Memory Lane, 2010 and this year The Passengers of the Night) manages to come up with a fresh approach.  “I wanted the real subject of the movie to be life itself, in all its aspects,” he explained at the time of the release. “I tried to catch this shifting and enigmatic reality that keeps slipping through our fingers, the fragments and shreds of existence that reach us, even if their meaning eludes us, to leave only a few memories and traces behind. It is not mourning per se, but life as I see it, constantly made of ambivalent, complex and luminous things, even in its darkest moments.”

At first, Lawrence and Zoé appear totally lost, like two overwhelmed ghosts wandering aimlessly, who, little by little, come alive as they crisscross the cities, timeless places photographed like a travelogue devoid of touristic cliches. Through the prism of those three summers, the lingering pain seems to diminish. But nothing can erase the past as they keep the souvenir of Sasha alive and vibrant. “Paradoxically, I think that summer is a season when absence is felt more acutely: deep blue and bright light bring out the emptiness even more clearly”, said Hers.

He films the successive seasons, the resounding vacuum experienced by the protagonists, bathed in the enchanted summer light with its healing power, as the feeling of loss metamorphoses, year after year. Like an aquarellist carefully selecting watercolors for his canvas, he applies soft touches to the intertwined storyline.  Ellipses and layers in the narration emphasize intimate feelings sharpened by grief with sensorial and impressionist effects, helped by a great soundtrack and songs (notably Stephanie City by Nick Garrie). Showing the ongoing march of time and how it affects the characters, sometimes on an imperceptible level, that enables them to access a form of truth and peace of mind.

Cinephiles will find in This Summer Feeling a subtle homage to Éric Rohmer: Sasha’s parents are played by Marie Rivière and Féodor Atkine, both seen in several of his films, who live on Lake Annecy, the very setting of the 1970 Claire’s Knee.

Mikhaël Hers is a filmmaker of infinite impressive grace and admirable restraint who chooses to delicately infuse his opus with a soothing serenity mirroring the precariousness of things and a permeating perennial vague à l’âme.

“I think cinema can also be a way to fight the passing of time, to create a semblance of eternity, illusory as it might be,” Hers remarked. “And help recapture part of the fleetingness of things and feelings which have evaporated.”