Sunny Dancer

Reserved seventeen-year-old Ivy has been in remission from leukaemia for ten months and – despite the efforts of her well-meaning parents – the experience of battling a serious illness has left her feeling gloomy and defeated. With great reluctance, she gives in to her parents’ pressure to go to a summer camp for children who have survived cancer. Despite her initial irritability, she soon befriends her cheerful roommate Ella and a group of cool teenagers, including the dreamy Jake, with whom she shares a special connection.

The teenagers crave the new experiences typical of their age: drinking, dancing, friendship, love, sex. But George Jaques – whose own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was still a teenager – weaves a more sombre undertone beneath all that cheerfulness. After all, the young people also live with the constant fear of a relapse, which could rob them of their normal lives at any moment. The reality of that situation often breaks through their rebellious façade: Jake’s panic attacks, Ivy’s aggression, the pitch-black gallows humour that the tough Ralph uses as a defence mechanism.

But the film never lets us forget that these are young people standing on the threshold of an adulthood they thought they might never experience.

Written by BW