Infinite Summer Review – Fantasia Festival 2024

Infinite Summer is written and directed by Miguel Llansó. After watching the title twice and failing to make sense of the narrative, I went to the reviews. Often there are times, in my movie friend circle, that a debate will begin about the reasons we don’t like certain movies. Many times fans will cry out. “You just didn’t understand it!” as a common defense for why it would be crazy to think otherwise. Mother of Movies has seen films that I didn’t understand. Some I still liked and others flat out didn’t.

Before we get to which camp I belong to regarding Infinite Summer, let me attempt to tell you what it is about. In the direct from public relations logline, the film is about three women. They reunite for a holiday on the Estonian coastline. The director shared this quote.

“Millions of years ago, hominids were doing similar things that we do today: fighting, being jealous, loving, insulting each other and laughing a lot. But what would be the future of humankind after an increasing attachment of our bodies to technological devices or transforming chemistry? Would it make sense to still talk about human desires, dreams and ambitions attached to this body?

How would we perceive individuality after the dissolution of our body’s boundaries, or its merging with technologies or other organic forms?

From a philosophical perspective, Infinite Summer revolves around these reflections on upcoming technologies as applied to our bodies. These transhumanist narratives are indelibly linked to the stories of the film.”

Infinite Summer Explained… Kind Of

In the opening scenes, Infinite Summer film introduces the main cast including Mia and Greta, who have been friends for years. They are joined by Sarah. Sarah isn’t much of a fan of Mia. So the trio forms an odd third-wheel dynamic. This dynamic is buffered by a fourth woman played by Sissi Nylia Benita.

Greta tells her friends a story about a date she went on, and they eat ice cream on the sand. She goes on in graphic detail. She talks about needing to partake in a mission for number 2’s and being unable to flush it. To solve her un-date-friendly scenario, she scoops the brown missile out with her hand, wraps it, and tosses it out the window. I watched this low-budget science fiction thriller again. I learned that Greta’s dating mishap tale is the only source of proof that these women are a close-knit group. Otherwise, Greta wouldn’t tell such a personal account.

Keen to watch another cosmic movie? Starfish is a cosmic and Eldrich fantasy that will blow your mind.

Movies About Transhumanism

Infinite Summer is set in a tech-driven age somewhere in the future. Hologram phones enable the user to have friends and family appear in a life-like fashion. In this future, drugs are also popular and as more friends arrive at the cabin to join the girls, a round of shots of some sort of hallucinagen is ferried to guests. The title makes a point of highlighting details with oddly stilted dialog, that often feels out of place. It uses a mix of Estonian language and English depending on who is speaking. When Mia speaks with family members the dialog switches to Estonian and in most other parts of the film dialog is in English.

Infinite Summer spends some time making sure we know that Mia doesn’t do drugs, partake in meditation, or drink alcohol. The use of the word meditation feels like a code word for drugs. The rest of the film explores what happens when people “meditate” using an app connected to a respirator. This respirator is being sold by a door-to-door like-salesman via a dating platform. Of course, the meditation app is a new technology. It is from the future. It can make you dissolve into pink cloud stuff. I said what I said.

Before we talk more about the pink cloud stuff, it’s important to discuss the dating platform. Despite there being men at the lakeside cabin party weekend, Greta initiates getting on a platform called Extreme Dating. A weird older dude pops into the room in hologram glory and asks Sarah on a date to a transmillenial gig, and whether she would like to try his new meditation app. In a complete about-face, this man piques Mia’s interest and he appears to her as well. Mia declines his offer, too, and tries to get her to ask Sarah out for him. Suddenly Mr. Mindfulness tracks her address and arrives at the party to see her.

Most would think this type of behavior to be a red flag. Instead, Mia ends up being pushed into being alone with him by Greta and then buying one of his contraptions. She immediately becomes mildly obsessed with Evor (Mr. Mindlfullness goes by many names.)

Tying all this together is a connection to a cyber crime-level conspiracy being investigated by Interpol. Interpol is represented by two officers, Catre and Jack who have accents that change during the Infinite Summers confusion sandwich. Jack and Catre have the cabin bugged and listen in on most of the events during the film to try and capture whoever is behind the meditation app. Studies show the app is making brains get black spots on it.

Connected to the respirator meditation app, the cybercrime investigation and the girl’s weekend is the detail that Mia works for a zoo. The Tallinn Zoo is run by robots that monitor the animal’s environments. The robots look like mascot chickens if that helps create a picture of the scene. The meditation app says “yo” a lot and makes anyone who uses it laugh a lot.

Infinite Summer Philosophy and Ending

A voice-over explains that thousands of years ago in Egypt animals lived in cages in close proximity to people until the animals forgot they were in cages. How this relates to Mia and her friends using a respirator to change their brain waves, I have no idea. They all turn to pink dust.

Greta and Sarah end up buying a respirator too. While Sara turns to dust, Greta becomes a weird interdimensional ghost. She is being tracked by the Interpol agents. Mia doesn’t turn into dust because the app can sense emotions and knows she is scared so she can’t be with her friends in the cosmic dust universe.

Infinite Summer is confusing, disjointed, and non-sensical in its message. But that’s OK because I didn’t understand it.

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Written and directed by: Miguel Llansó Production: Tallifornia (Estonia), Lanzadera Films (Spain), Savage Rose (US).
Cast of Infinite Summer: Hannah Gross (Joker, Mindhunter), Johanna Rosin, Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock & Ciaron Davis as Mr. Mindfulness, and Sissi Nylia Benita
Language: English, Estonian | Genre: Thriller, Sci-Fi.

Infinite Summer is rated

2 Points for trying out of 5

For another movie with Estonian dialogue watch Chainsaws Were Singing. Watch You Wouldn’t Understand It next, it also made no sense, but the imagery and oddity make it satisfyingly watchable. For more movies about artificial intelligence, watch Subservience or

Infinite Summer played at the Fantasia Film Festival 2024 on July 27th. Mother of Movies has been part of the official remote press since 2018 and is a big supporter of everything that comes out of this illustrious event. For more information about this title and more at this year’s festival visit the official website.