Summer & Joy

Summer & Joy is a look at the relationship of two women: Summer, a poet, and Joy, a photographer. They are played by Scarlett Alexis and Daisy Pheonix in their youthful flashbacks, and Dana Vespoli and Reagan Foxx in the contemporary scenes. Their initial flirtatious photography session in a flower-filled meadow is followed up with a chiaroscuro window-lit girl/girl that moves from a floor to a bed. "But even then, something was amiss," Summer writes in her journal, as she flashes back to them cavorting in a shower.

Some 40 years later, Summer is a published poet, as we see from the book "Breeding Lilacs/Sapphic Poems" framed front-and-center as Summer reminisces poetically. When Joy surfaces, she's rushing out the door, late for work, as Summer protests, "No kiss? No I-love-you-honey? You're just gonna leave?" then goes back to her notebook to write about it. Joy's haste brings her to her studio, where assistant Ken Feels helps her through a tech glitch and listens to her personal problems ("She is so needy. She keeps living in the past. People change. We used to be inseparable ... I don’t know what happened. Or how it happened.") and she drops to Feels that when she hooked up with him and Arin Jones—at her instigation—it was "curiosity," although when we see their encounter and it ends with her stoically observing, "Well, that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience ... I should go," he should have gotten the hint.

Summer has her own hetero backstory, as we see in a good-old-days flashback when her beach jaunt with fuck buddy Axel Haze gets serious ("I met someone" "What's his name?" "Her name") and she friendzones him.

When Summer finds a box of Joy's mementos, she finds a note Feels left her and some sexy pictures of him—all professional, of course, but what are the pictures doing there?—leading to a confrontation and resolution.

Summer & Joy is a throwback to the '70s Golden Age, when story-driven features with some sexual content were the engine that drove Porno Chic into the mainstream consciousness. It deserves a place on every features shelf. Recommended. Emphatically.