The Cure’s song inspired the Italian and French film “My Summer with Irene”

“My summer with Irene”

Courtesy of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Listening to The Cure’s 1992 song “To Wish Impossible Things” was a major inspiration for Italian filmmaker Carlo Sironi in writing, co-writing, and directing the Italian-French drama. My summer with Irene.

“Young and shy Clara meets fiery Irene,” reads the website of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where the film was screened last week in the Horizons section. “These two girls with completely opposite personalities meet through their recent struggle with an illness that, in the midst of their vulnerable teenage years, has transformed their outlook on life. When they impulsively decide to spend time by the sea, they feel as if they want to stop time.”

The idea came quite spontaneously. “The way this film started is a bit strange for me,” Sironi told the audience at the 58th Karlovy Vary Film Festival during a Q&A after a screening. “I think some ideas come very logically. We research something, we look for inspiration or something else (which I did) for my previous film (Alone) It was like. It was a very logical, very step-by-step movie.

So what does the English rock band’s song about lost love and lost dreams have to do with their latest film? “I was actually listening to The Cure song that you have in the end credits just two weeks before we started shooting” their feature debut Alone“In those four and a half minutes, I started seeing a lot of images from the film – of Clara, of the island, of the disease. And I basically just wrote a page or two and then put it all in a drawer.”

It all came as a surprise to the director. It was only after he had finished Alone and it was when he went back to the notes and ideas he had taken that he realized something. “At first, I didn’t understand why I had this idea,” he told the audience. “It was only when I started working on the film that I recognized in these two girls the character and personality of two of my very close friends from high school. They were very close and had a very strong and special friendship. The end of their friendship was very dramatic, but it had nothing to do with the disease.”

Sironi concludes: “For me it was strange. There was something imaginary… and something that was linked to my memory and something personal. And I had to mix the two” and then also interview young patients.