LMarina Suma’s gaze over Jerry Calà’s eyes is not exactly what comes to mind when we are there, in the whirlwind of a summer love affair. And yet, who can forget that scene from Taste of seathe film that just turned 40. There is everything, after all: there is the promise of a leap in the heart (in harmony with Marina and Jerry) and there is that of an encounter. What at the end of the season, with the flirt type, we all plan. For this, Carlo Vanzina left his mark in a couple of generations.
Flavor of the sea, what happened to it?
And his brother Enrico has recently updated the concept: he signed the screenplay of Under the Riccione suna film by duo YouNuts! with Isabella Ferrari, who is now the mother of one of the young lovers. That the meaning of summer is all in love? «I fell in love with the head of the animation of the village» says Chiara V., 32, manager based in Milan. «I was twenty-two years old, a new single status and a great desire for laughter, courtship, friends, beers. Love at first sight comes at the end of the holiday. Three days of passion and promises, an exchange of phone numbers and a tearful greeting.
In the address book I register it with his name, Miki. Too bad it’s also that of a very dear friend. So, when after months I receive the message “I’m in Milan, why don’t we see each other?”, I reply. And from the other side I hear his voice, the entertainer from Campania. I can scan the appointment: the summer magic is over and I fear disappointment. But that charges back in and I accept the invitation for a coffee. There he is, Miki, the truzzo I feared. I feel embarrassed but in the end we laugh a lot. I wish him good luck with his new job in the city and good luck with that big, too big belt he wore over his jeans » she concludes.
Because we still need the flirting of a single summer at the Flavor of salt (Getty)
Phenomenology of summer loves
Call it the phenomenology of summer loves, an evolving matter that concerns everyone. Even those who, at the seaside, have hoped for the (rare) possibility of finding what lasts forever. It happened to Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen. They meet in the summer of 1960 in Greece, on the island of Hydra. He is 26, she is 25 (in addition to having a child with a man who dumped her on the island). They love each other and will never stop, even though they leave each other: they will die within a few months of each other and after exchanging letters full of love, of the only one who knows how to make life a perpetual summer.
He tells it Dance me to the end of love (AnimaMundi), a book by Maxence Fermine whose title is one of Cohen’s songs (which could loosely be translated as “make me love you until the end of your life”). After all, summer loves are a bit like training. They are for living.
Thirst for lightness
“I would recommend them to all the kids who tell me in therapy that they don’t know if they’ve ever really fallen in love,” says Laura Pigozzi, psychoanalyst and author of Toxic loves (Rizzoli). «They arrive intoxicated with silence, anesthetized by a life scheduled between university and career where in the first place there is the need to show mum and dad how good they are. The market asks them, of course, and they accept it. Some add that committing to love is stressful, others that they don’t trust anyone. The frequency with which I hear these observations made, even by forty-year-olds, is the novelty of this time».
Getting drunk in the summer
To mark the distance that separates us from Taste of sea so maybe it’s not just online dating apps. «Summer loves have really changed. Frustration and stumbling are no longer tolerated.Everything has to be perfect when you have a performing life. So it’s hard to admit that you fell in love with such a rough person, thanks to the magic of the holiday. And yet, that’s exactly what it would take: to get drunk in the summer, to unfreeze a life without desire. Summer flirting is uninhibited, unconventional, but not secondary. Meeting, for those who are used to choosing by looking at a photo on the screen, is essential. The body is a magnetic field, a source of energy. It counts more than the rest» adds Pigozzi.
Summer loves: the challenge of the fleeting moment
Teresa, in front of a moon full of hormones, gives in to Tommaso from the very first evening: they are on an island in the Mediterranean, she confuses the intimacy of bodies with that of feelings (actually she always does) and he is a man on the run for work (actually he always does). In the end – even though they are so different – they surrender to that love which, they admit, is “a thing you do”. The plot of How to make love. Romance of an underwoman (Sonzogno) falls within this phenomenology. Sarah Victoria Barberis, the author, 39 years old, head of communication at the Scuola Holden, he says: «I wrote the novel because for the first time a man fell in love with me and wanted to try to build a real relationship. It seemed to me an extraordinary event to capture. Love must be celebrated and celebrated. And I follow Annie Ernaux that she needed to write things down otherwise she had only lived them ».
Summer love free
Summer, in these pages, is the perfect metaphor for love. At the beginning everything was beautiful and promising, suddenly so many clouds and we had to go back to work. As in a real relationship, which requires commitment and dedication. «I think there is a close connivance between summer and hormones, otherwise it is not explained why I chose to mate with people that the next day I pretended not to recognize on the beach. Let’s say that I didn’t need to get to winter to realize which character I was in love with. That was enough the next morning. Of my summer loves I remember above all the enormous desire to be desired. I was an ugly, overweight, hairy little girl. When things got real, I drew back in terror. I preferred to imagine, as Teresa does, love with emotionally unreachable people. More than loves, in my case I would still speak of summer awkwardness. I think of the first kiss with a very sweet boy whom I had asked to kiss me under the sheet because I was ashamed and could not bear to open my eyes and see him kiss me. The next day he buzzed me at the house but I didn’t open it for him. Never seen again. Another big regret was having decided by force my first time: I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and thought it was intolerable to be a virgin. So I got drunk at a party, grabbed the first one by the arm and dragged him to the beach. The next day I pretended not to know him, as usual »she adds.
Have a laugh
In any case, his Instagram community (almost all pink) (@etimofuggente) has unanimously ruled on the flirt in question: great crushes without great results. But fortunately also: great events reserved for all ages. «Summer feeds everyone’s illusions, makes us forget our heavy mortality. Many researches say that we cheat more in the summer, especially women. A love affair of this type is always regenerating if you don’t have too many expectations and even if it doesn’t teach anything. But that’s the beauty of her. Who does their homework on vacation? Mistakes are made that will have no morals. And the slight disappointment on the horizon will be useful for laughing with friends» continues Barberis.
«Revitalizing, democratic but also perfect: it is their fixed expiration that makes them so, bearers of an (irresistible) charge of erotic necessity. The natural increase of serotonin (given exposure to the sun) then it is our ally: it makes us bolder and therefore in line with the essence of these events which «are pure concentrate of emotions, experienced at great speed and concluded with excruciating farewells that hardly translate into concrete encounters. He thinks about meeting in Salina and meeting again in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. What hope does a love have in such conditions? That’s why I wrote the novel, I wanted to see how the miracle of two who are doomed from the beginning and instead don’t get swept away by the divergent movements that generally separate those who could love each other but are always afraid».
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