Martina Plura’s Hot Girl Summer throws three lifelong best friends into one unforgettable summer. It’s messy, it’s awkward, and it crosses several lines of decency in the process.
Inken (Kya-Celina Barucki), Vicky (Julia Novohradsky), and Lena (Nhung Hong) are three best friends staring down the end of summer in what is the female version of the teen sex comedy: before school starts again in the fall, each girl will experience her first orgasm. The pact is set—before school starts in fall, our heroines will have had their first big “O.”
Inken already has a boyfriend, Tim (Jason Klare), but he’s a lot more interested in his own “release” than hers, no matter how many hints she drops. Inken, of course, has her platonic best friend, Flin (Yoran Leicher), who’s been stuck in the friend zone for years. Lena is the shy one and spends the summer working up the nerve to talk to her crush, Nick (Jamie-Lee Curt Williams), all while sitting on a secret of her own. Vicky, meanwhile, is the promiscuous one and, after all of the boys she’s been through, only now realizes she never had an orgasm. Then there’s their teen rival in Cheyenne (Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen), who loves nothing more than being better than the trio.
While in search of a literal “climax” to their stories, the three friends wade through bad advice, humiliating mishaps, and a school social scene that rivals American high schools. Between Inken’s home life with her dad, Gero (Henning Baum), Flin’s mixed signals, and Lena’s secret sexual discovery, the summer that was supposed to bring the girls closer ends up testing their friendship.
“The pact is set—before school starts in fall, our heroines will have had their first big ‘O.'”
Hot Girl Summer is the female version of American Pie we always wanted, rather than the actual female version of American Pie we got years ago. It follows the sexual misadventures of three best friends, Inken (Kya-Celina Barucki), Vicky (Julia Novohradsky), and Lena (Nhung Hong), over one h***y summer, where their loyalty to one another is at risk. But this friendship is the foundation the entire story is built on—far beyond the sex. Each girl has her own thing going on (like a bicycle seat), but it always circles back to their undying love for one another.
Now this is a sex comedy. What I like most about Hot Girl Summer is that it doesn’t play it safe, at least not by American standards. If this were an American film, there’d be lines that couldn’t be crossed these days. Here, those lines just don’t exist—plain and simple. To be clear, this isn’t American Pie—it doesn’t go anywhere near that level of nudity, raunchiness, or straight-up eroticism. But it’s not trying to. It’s exploring teen girl sexuality in a similar vein to ’90s U.S. teen sex comedies. It’s the sexual predicaments our protagonists find themselves in and the awkward teen dating situations that feel all too real.
The misadventures land in the same neighborhood as American Pie, but each one is specific to the character living it, not just a retread. It’s an over-the-top sex comedy that fully commits to the bit, and the cast is exceptional. The three main leads keep the whole thing grounded even as the story goes to some pretty wild places. By the end, though, it’s got heart. That’s what lands.
For screening information, visit the Hot Girl Summer official website.
"…It's messy, it's awkward, and it crosses several lines of decency…"
