‘In the Summers’ Builds in Negative Space
Allison Salinas, René “Residente” Pérez Joglar, and Kimaya Thais Limòn in In the Summers. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
“It's a lot of beauty, but a lot of heartache as well,” filmmaker Alessandra Lacorazza describes Las Cruces, the desert town in Southern New Mexico where she set her first film, In the Summers. But with these words, she could just as easily be talking about the movie itself.
“It's an indie, Latin, queer film,” they say. And the story is for everyone, touching upon themes of forgiveness, family, coming-of-age, and failure. It follows two sisters, Violetta (Lio Mehiel, Kimaya Thais Limòn, and Dreya Renae Castillo, depending on the year) and Eva (Sasha Calle, Allison Salinas, and Luciana Quinonez) during the summers when they go live with their father, Vicente (played by a phenomenal René Pérez Joglar a.k.a. reggaetonero Residente).
Sasha Calle and Lío Mehiel in In the Summers. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Existing in distinct droplets of time, In the Summers is a film of negative spaces with as much happening off-screen as on, with perhaps more said in the moments of silence than in dialogue. Loosely autobiographical, the idea first came to Lacorazza during a conversation she had with her sister as the two reminisced about the summers they spent with their father. “It just struck me that that was an interesting structure for a film—seeing this man through the eyes of his daughters, through these brief moments, and trying to understand him in those moments, and feeling those absences,” they say. The film’s structure thus mirrors that trick of memory that connects disparate moments by the people, places, and feelings they share.
“So much of life is like that,” Lacorazza says of the film’s emphasis on omission. “For better, for worse, that's just the reality of being alive and interacting with people—you don't always get the answers even though you want them. And I think so much of the heartache of life is trying to find out those answers.”
“For better, for worse, that’s just the reality of being alive and interacting with people—you don’t always get the answers even though you want them.”
For the edges of the negative space to be sharply visible to the audience, Lacorazza ensured the cast knew what their character experienced in the moments we don’t see but where life continues to happen. “Did [Vicente] go to school? Did he try? What did you do? Did he call? [I was] just answering a million questions so that we knew what we were doing, and that way we can show the audience the results,” they share. “If I didn't have actors that could feel those in-betweens and show the audience the impact of those in-betweens and those silences, it wouldn't have worked.”
Kimaya Thais Limòn, René “Residente” Pérez Joglar, and Allison Salinas in In the Summers. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Lío Mehiel, Sasha Calle, and René “Residente” Pérez Joglar in In the Summers. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The effect is haunting, with the melancholy of the trio’s relationship lingering long after the film ends. “There's always this triangle between them and [they’re] navigating that triangle,” Lacorazza explains. “So the girls are put at odds by the way the father treats them. And then, as they're evolving, the triangle changes. Who's trying to get whose attention and who's protecting who, all that shifts, and that is all part of the dynamic.”
It’s effortless and beautiful in the film, both of which are a credit to Lacorazza’s craft. “Inexperience is what let me do that,” she says. “Because normally, they’re like, ‘Don't work with kids. Don't have things take more than a few months.’” And she went against the conventional wisdom that should make the filmmaking process easier. As a result, the shoot was “a logistical nightmare,” particularly for Residente who was “jumping in the same day [between] three different summers,” they say. “It's almost like three different characters, because it's three different versions of a person, and a lot has changed.”
“Thank goodness I like intensity because making an indie film is really hard.”
For indie filmmakers and first-time marathon-runners alike, “part of the success is just finishing it . . . Thank goodness I like intensity because making an indie film is really hard,” Lacorazza recounts. So when In the Summers got into the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, a thrilled Lacorazza thought attending would be the highlight and end of their journey. “Obviously, to win Sundance was beyond my wildest expectations and insane,” the writer-director says. They picked up the prize for outstanding directing, and In the Summers also won arguably the most-watched category, U.S. domestic features. “It's been such a gift that I haven't fully processed yet,” she shares. “I think I'm still on the roller coaster, but it's a little bit more fun this year.”
In addition to its construction and use of negative space, part of what makes the film so arresting is how Lacorazza portrays queerness. There’s a scene early on when Vicente makes a disparaging remark about a queer friend in front of his daughters. Watching Violetta observe her father and his casual bigotry, it’s easy to see, just by her expression, how she stores that information away for future use, relying on it to help her navigate this tricky relationship going forward.
Dreya Castillo, René “Residente” Pérez Joglar, and Luciana Elisa Quiñonez in In the Summers. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
“I was just telling a story that felt real. It's about your connection to your father and your complicated relationships with your father and with your sibling. That's the core of it. Queer people go through those experiences as well,” Lacorazza explains, noting how Violetta’s sexuality colors her journey but does not define it. “For me, it was really important to have a queer character but have the storyline not revolve around that.”
Likewise, In the Summers is a decidedly Latinx film — with Colombian-born Lacorazza now living in the United States and an almost entirely Latinx cast and crew — but the stories are universal. Still, the filmmaker is happy to declare her work a movie “made by the diaspora” and for it as well.
“I just hope that the industry continues to invest in bold voices that are having something to say, that are not just remakes and that kind of stuff, but original stories.”
And yet, some audience members criticized the lack of subtitles for the Spanish in the film. But Lacorazza argues that she’s actually portraying “that perspective of the diaspora that grows up in the U.S. that doesn't speak Spanish and maybe understands words here or there or understands some of it. And that, to me, was an important part of the experience, just asking also the audience to lean into the emotion and not be caught up with words.” This slippage, the lack of understanding what the characters said even when it happens on camera, is part of how In the Summers uses negative space to empathize with its queer, Latinx characters and show the beauty and frustrations of our experiences. It portrays what it’s like to not understand everything that takes place in our own homes, asking the viewer to fill in the blanks based upon context clues the same way “no sabo” kids do.
Now, there’s a limit to how far the unknown should extend. And Lacorazza, like many Latinx filmmakers, is tired of our community being left out of the picture. We deserve to tell our own stories, and In The Summers is proving that the results can be beautiful, provocative, and award-winning. “I just hope that the industry continues to invest in bold voices that are having something to say, that are not just remakes and that kind of stuff, but original stories. And then in terms of Latins, I just want us to be able to create anything we want and not be put in boxes,” they say. “Someone told me that I was the first Latina to win Sundance. I was like, ‘It's 2024, y'all, that's crazy, you know?’ I don't want to be the first.’”
Trailblazing may not be on Lacorazza’s list but her powerful voice and artistry have already resulted in one barrier-breaking film. Here’s hoping they get the opportunity to make many more.
In the Summers is currently in theaters.
A writer, speaker, and critic, Cristina Escobar works at the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture. She’s the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LatinaMedia.Co, an indie publication platforming Latina and queer Latinx perspectives in media. In addition, she has an accomplished freelance career with bylines in the A.V. Club, Glamour, NPR, Refinery29, Remezcla, TODAY, Vulture, and more. A TEDx speaker, Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, member of the Critics Choice Association, and board member of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association, she lives in Santa Fe with her husband, two kids, and rescue dog.