THE OBSERVER

Dark Summer should attract attention to it's 32-year-old British maker, Charles Teton, who raised the money, and wrote, produced, directed, edited and photographed this Widescreen movie on Liverpool locations. The story centres on Abe (Steve Ako), a working-class black, who embarks on an affair with his racist boss's daughter and ends up a triple loser - first he's -sacked from his labouring job in a scrap yard then the girl walks out on him, and finally he takes a bad beating in his first fight as a professional boxer. Teton suggests a connection between the boy's defeated life and the despair of present-day Merseyside, and the movie proceeds through a succession of strikingly composed Cinemascope montages of the post industrial landscape across which Abe passes. The camera never moves and Teton deliberately refrains from making dynamic use of space. He doesn't even go into the boxing ring. Abe appears to inhabit a social vacuum and even the attractive reggae music eventually becomes monotonous. But there is enterprise and promise here, and one looks forward to Teton's next movie.

Philip French