Stream It Or Skip It: ‘In the Summers’ on Hulu, a Poignant Story of Addiction and Coming-of-Age, Told in Four Parts

In the Summers (now streaming on Hulu) made a major splash at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury prize and director award – remarkable for the first-time feature by Alessandra Lacorazza, who loosely based the film on her travels to Colombia to visit her father during the seasons in the title. It stars 29-time Latin Grammy-winning Puerto Rican rapper Luis Perez Joglar, a.k.a. Residente, in his first acting role, across from a variety of co-stars playing his character’s daughters at four different stages of their lives, to dramatically potent effect.

IN THE SUMMERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Vicente (Joglar) seems nervous. He smokes a joint and dresses and heads to the airport to meet his daughters. Violeta (Dreya Renae Castillo) is two, maybe three years older than Eva (Luciana Quinonez). They’ve flown from California to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where Vicente lives in the house he inherited from his mother. It becomes increasingly clear that the film adheres to the girls’ point-of-view, since we never learn exactly how Vicente makes a living, although he hosts a high-school student for a tutoring session once. The days are halcyon – swimming in Vicente’s backyard pool, water-balloon wars, a trip to the carnival, dinners where he encourages the girls to put their faces smack in a plate of spaghetti and chow down (he even joins them). Then they head to the local bar, where they shoot pool and eat burgers, and where Vicente knows the bartender, Carmen (Emma Ramos), who raises a concerned eyebrow as he keeps ordering beers. A later incident finds Violeta cutting her own hair off, and Vicente getting an earful from their mother on the phone, after which he shouts a few choice descriptives of her. Their relationship didn’t seem to end amicably.

That’s the first of the film’s four chapters, set a year or three apart. The table is set for three more visits, none as seemingly carefree as the first, as the girls are older and smarter and, perhaps, more wary of their father. Previous hints of trouble emerge into something more substantial during their second visit, when teen Violeta (Kimaya Thais Limon) arrives with a short haircut that’s absolutely queer coded, and Eva (Allison Salinas) doesn’t have the wariness of Vicente like her sister does. At this point they learn that Vicente is a bit of a mean drunk, and isn’t around as often; the house is dirty and messy and the pool has fallen to neglect, so the girls wander around town only to be picked up by a concerned Carmen. 

Violeta sits out the third visit, so Eva (Salinas again) arrives alone, to Vicente’s even more disheveled home, where he lives with Yenny (Leslie Grace) and their baby daughter. The pool is empty. One morning, Eva tends to the wailing baby during Vicente’s absence and while Yenny sleeps through the clamor. It’s a lonely summer. Eva (Sasha Calle) and Violeta (Lio Mehiel) return for a fourth time as adults – the former seems passive, directionless and quietly troubled, while Violeta is a college graduate who has transitioned to being male. Vicente’s place is tidier, he seems to be back on track personally and he’s an attentive dad to his toddler daughter. But the distance between him and his older offspring seems almost too wide to span.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The thoughtful manner in which In the Summers portrays the passage of time and the growth of a child under unstable parentage brings to mind a previous Sundance winner, A Thousand and One.

Performance Worth Watching: Joglar holds the film together as its mainstay screen presence, showing considerable depth in a quiet portrayal of a troubled, possibly broken man. 

Memorable Dialogue: “You guys did OK without me.” – Vicente’s heartbreaking realization

Sex and Skin: A couple of non-graphic scenes.

Our Take: A key scene illustrates how In the Summers functions: Vicente pulls teenage Violeta aside. “Do you trust me?” he asks. There’s a pause, then Violeta replies, “Yeah,” and I’m pretty sure the answer wasn’t in the word but in the silence preceding it. Earlier incidents point her towards uncertainty; later ones will validate it. He teaches her how to roll a joint, and she takes two or three puffs, coughs, leaves the room and – well, then what? Is she walking through a door or just sticking her head in to take a look, so to speak? 

We don’t get a definitive answer. Lacorazza’s screenplay isn’t a lifelike portrait but an impressionist quadtych fueled by unspoken emotions, with each of the four chapters preceded by a still-life shot of an array of carefully arranged items, little shrines dedicated to memory. There are no grandiose overtures or melodrama. We’re left to interpret Eva and Violeta’s expressions and mannerisms and the way they talk, what they share and what they withhold. Their visits with Vicente form an unusual coming-of-age story affected by the darkness of their father’s sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden suffering. We only witness a few scarring moments; what we imagine fuels them is surely worse. 

This is an understated, quietly devastating story playing out amidst the lovingly photographed desolate beauty of the surrounding New Mexico desert. These wide-open spaces carry significant thematic weight – Vicente is the mountain on the horizon that seems close until one tries to walk towards it, feeling the significant distance with every step. Lacorazza fills her film with symbolism that shades our experience of these people, and one hopes that someday Vicente’s toddler daughter can appreciate the joys of a clean pool full of transparent water. 

Our Call: In the Summers is a poignant family drama playing out in an inspired, unusual manner. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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