The Summer Book      Director: Charlie McDowellCert: NoneStarring: Glenn Close, Emily Matthews, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Pekka Strang, Sophia HeikkiläRunning Time: 1 hr 34 minsIt has taken more than half a century for Tove Jansson’s celebrated novel – a memoir in shallow disguise – to make its dignified way to the big screen. No great surprise there. The creator of the Moomins is a near-sacred figure in Sweden and Finland. First published in 1972, The Summer Book has remained a comfort to thoughtful readers ever since. Who would risk meddling with something so treasured?Charlie McDowell’s English-language adaptation is, if anything, a little too respectful to the source text. There is a sense throughout of filmmakers tiptoeing across the fragile surface of a narrative that can barely sustain their polite weight. There are life lessons here. There are emotional connections worth savouring. But there is not much forward motion.The premise is simple (and not much expanded upon). Sophia (Emily Matthews), a young girl who has recently lost her mother, holidays on a Scandinavian island with her wise maternal grandmother (Glenn Close) and her grieving, withdrawn father (Anders Danielsen Lie). Wandering through limpid maritime landscapes, girl and granny ponder some of the great mysteries. “What do you think there are more of – stars in the sky or fish in the sea?” the granny muses. Answers come in oblique, gnomic form.No fault can be found in Close’s performance. Though no longer in the first flush of youth, that great actor is still required to age up a bit as the hunched, crinkled keeper of northern wisdom. There is a sense of an archetypically benevolent ancient about her: gently burbling as might the rounded granny in a Studio Ghibli picture. Close is in perfect sync with the film’s understated mood. Tinkly piano melodies by Hania Rani underscore gentle conversation as the sun sinks on the Gulf of Finland.But what is the picture really about? Potentially, everything. The book was seen as a meditation on loss and mortality that – before such things were fashionable – readers could carry with them as a daily companion. Yet those lessons struggle to show themselves when the prose is stripped away. Anyone coming to the film with no prior knowledge would rightly suspect that a skeleton has been filleted from the film’s pale flesh.In simple narrative terms, the picture deals with the emotional gap that seems to have opened up between Sophia and her dad since their recent bereavement. “He doesn’t love me since she died,” the girl says. We know this isn’t true because we know human nature. The Grandmother is there to bridge the chasm, but this is not the sort of film to allow a sudden closing reconciliation.The picture is sometimes old-fashioned in a bad way. It seems unfortunate that the adaptation could not have come to us in the original Swedish. Close layers on the pinched Scandinavian vowels while young Matthews speaks in her own English accent. This is how they used to cope with adaptations of European sources on 1970s telly.The Summer Book is, however, also old-fashioned in a good way. Here is a film for a mainstream audience – a senior audience in particular – that gives itself space to stretch out in loose and unhurried fashion. More than a few such projects have, in recent years, become modest hits as older viewers in search of gentle balm make their way back to the cinemas. Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, fact fans) hasn’t quite managed to make a thumping yarn of the beloved text, but he fills his film with lovely moments that will stay in the memory. Granny and her charge sneaking on to a neighbour’s island. A midsummer celebrated in floral headpieces. A late negotiation with eternity.The film will have its fans.On limited release from August 7th