Perhaps Frank Perry could have directed a film like "Last Summer" in a year other than 1969, but it seems appropriate, that in that watershed year of films like "Easy Rider" and "Midnight Cowboy", that this little-seen gem about the cruelty of youth was conceived and released.
Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, and Bruce Davison play a trio of well-to-do teenagers who are summering on New York's Fire Island, where Hershey's character, Sandy, uses her budding sexuality as a powerful force to retain control over the two boys.
The person to watch in this film, however, is Catherine Burns (who is she? whatever happened to her?) who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as Rhoda, who invites herself into this closed circle, and becomes the ultimate victim of their cruelty and especially Sandy's hositility towards anyone who threatens her power. The fact that Burns didn't win the Oscar for this brilliant performance is compounded by the fact that she lost to Goldie Hawn, as a hippy chick in the much less entertaining "Cactus Flower". She is physically unlike the other three, in that she is a bit on the chubby side, and her intellect (or pretense of intellect) makes her the most mature of the bunch.
It is because of that intellect, that she is perceived as a threat by Sandy, and must therefore ultimately be punished. Burns has a brilliant scene, basically a monologue, where she describes her mother's death, and it it a chilling thing to watch. She tells the story as though she has distanced herself from the event, and yet her emotions cannot help but spring through, like leaks in a dam.
Perry's direction is fine, and the cinematography is beautiful, perfectly capturing the haze that hangs over beaches on sunny afternoons. My only complaint is with the editing in the film's final scenes, but that may have more to do with the censors (the TCM print of "Last Summer" is obviously the one that was edited from the original X rating to an R) but it muddies the scene of Rhoda's humiliation. It is a stirring film, one that I watched several weeks ago, but have been turning over in my mind for quite a while, because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about it, or how I wanted to say it. Essentially, it remains an undiscovered treasure by most people, but it is definitely worth a viewing.
