THE STORY – Filmed over 25 years, it traces the lives of two inseparable cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, as they grow up in the vast Argentine Pampas.
THE CAST – Guillermina Aranciaga & Belinda Stutz
THE TEAM – Alessandra Sanguinetti (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
Capturing the passage of time is a uniquely filmic idea. Of course, storytelling is as old as mankind, but books or theater can’t truly show you years passing right before your eyes. Photographs come close, but no other art form has the magic of editing, allowing viewers to see someone getting older and older within the span of a feature film. We’ve seen countless documentaries and narrative features utilizing this magic trick over the years, from Michael Apted’s “Up” series to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” to the recent Best Documentary Short nominee “How Do You Measure a Year?” Still, there’s something so moving about seeing a child full of possibility and dreams move into adulthood, becoming the person they were always meant to be. It’s a reminder – either haunting or beautiful depending on your perspective – of the fleeting time we humans have in a life. Photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti spent 25 years capturing footage of two cousins in Argentina, chronicling moments in their lives moving from childhood to motherhood in “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer.” The format may be familiar, but it’s no less effective at showing the years gone by.
Sanguinetti directs “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” an extension of her photography exhibitions that debuted in 2010 and 2020. Beginning in 1999, Sanguinetti set out to photograph an Argentinian farm, but soon became enamored with two girls there, Guillermina (Guille) and Belinda. Like most kids, these cousins loved the attention of the camera, putting on a show whenever the camcorder pointed in their direction. The girls play dress-up, dance around, splash in a river, all while Sanguinetti captures everything. Nothing particularly special happens; it’s simply their everyday lives, which is precisely what makes it so meaningful. They chat about their dreams for the future. Guille, for instance, worries about having a boyfriend one day, because movies have convinced her that they might abandon her. These are the little moments and wonderings of life that might’ve gone unremembered if not for Sanguinetti’s camera, before the girls inevitably grow up.
As we see the girls throughout this time period, there’s a pure joy about them. Seemingly without self-consciousness or worry – no doubt due to Sanguinetti’s care and comfort behind the camera – Guille and Belinda enjoy the attention. This carefree spirit extends to life on their farm, even as gruesome as that can sometimes get. Amidst caring for goats and cows, there’s a jarring shot of a cow embryo, still in its amniotic sac, lying in the grass. The girls pull open the sac while laughing, playing with this doomed animal. While this is certainly shocking, it’s presented so matter-of-factly that it’s just assumed to be a part of everyday life on this farm. Animals die. It’s a fact of life. At their young age, there’s an acceptance – though perhaps not a deep understanding yet – of these hard truths. It’s a fairly startling scene that hints, in some strange ways, at the realities of life that may feel darker in the years to come.
Nearly half of the film takes place in this initial timeframe, 1999. There’s no rush to move on to the older years that we know are headed our way. Much like life, the film lingers longer in those childhood years, as if they might last forever. Some may struggle with the apparent aimlessness in these early sequences, wondering where this story may be headed with the slow-moving imagery, but that pacing is clearly intentional. Sanguinetti takes her time observing these moments where these girls discovered themselves. And so, when the film leaps into the later years and we see the girls getting older, time seems to speed up, flying through the next 25 years at a much quicker pace. But that seems entirely accurate, in some tragic way. Time seems so much more fleeting now as adults than it did when days seemed endless as children.
Sanguinetti began this as a photography project, so there’s quite a large quality gap between the camcorder footage and her photographs. Her pictures are truly stunning, bursting with color and posed in such unique ways. The video, on the other hand, is less posed and artfully-constructed, though much more authentic as a result. We only get fleeting glimpses of Sanguinetti, including her hair dangling over in front of the lens as she presumably puts her eye to the viewfinder. Still, we know she’s always there, gently prompting the girls on. And as the years begin to pass, the weight of time gets heavier and heavier, especially as Guille and Belinda face their own struggles of motherhood, love, and loss.
It’s rare that a film’s title itself can evoke emotions, but “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer” does exactly that. Don’t we all wish we could capture time in a bottle and relive those treasured moments again and again? Even the difficult ones, as a reminder of what we’ve come through. As both a photographer and director, Sanguinetti brings an immensely human touch, observing these girls, these women, with intense empathy that radiates from the film. Tender, unguarded, and quietly observant, “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer” condenses 25 years into an hour and a half, but never loses the weight of every year that’s passed. It’s a warm, observant documentary that offers profound reflections on time, the future, and how quickly it all slips away.
