A Summer Story

Frank Ashton (Wilby), a sensitive, poetic type of chappie, and Balliol man to boot, espies rosy-lipped-and-cheeked Megan (Stubbs) a-gathering flowers on the blooming Dartmoor heather. She's a poor orphan. He's twisted his ankle. He lodges at the humble 19-roomed cottage lovingly polished by Megan's adopted aunt Mrs Narracombe (York), and love blooms, much to the dismay of Mrs Narracombe and son Joe (he of the cloth cap). Piers Haggard adapts John Galsworthy's Edwardian Wessex-set novella in suitably tasteful scenes: a dappled shot of Megan hanging out washing, framed in leaves; much wistful glancing out of windows; a lamp-lit scene of merry country dancing with the yokel peasants, where they first touch; a warm and glowing love-tryst in a cow-shed loft. Sadly, Frank is called away, but promises to return and marry, for be damned their class differences. The film is framed as a remembrance, in Go-Between fashion, of an older, sadder, and wiser Frank. Old-fashioned and avoidable.