Three Gen Z
Friends head to a desert
music festival and romantic hijinks ensue in this breezy roadtrip charmer
Not to be confused with the
British period drama of the same name starring Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw that came out a few weeks back, this Summerland is an American-made coming-out and coming-of-age
comedy, low budget but impressively high in concept. The setup posits three Gen Z young adults – straight couple Stacey (Maddie Phillips) and Oliver (Rory J Saper) with Oliver’s best friend, newly out gay man Bray (Chris Ball, also the film’s co-writer) on a roadtrip from
Washington state to
California to attend a desert-set music festival called Summerland, which looks like a cross between Burning Man and Coachella. The interesting queer twist is that Bray has been catfishing a hunky Christian guy named Shawn (Dylan Playfair) by pretending to be Stacey, convinced that if he could only lure Shawn into meeting him in the flesh he could coax out Shawn’s true sexuality, as yet unrecognised even by Shawn. Meanwhile, Stacey and Oliver are having their own issues around commitment and honesty.