Adolescence is at its most self-conscious when it tries to appear nonchalant. In Last Summer, the director-writer team of Frank and Eleanor Perry (David and Lisa, The Swimmer) attempt a casual parable of puberty rites and wrongs. Like their subjects, they too frequently mistake postures for performances and smartness for wisdom.
On a resort beach, a ripening, broad-beamed girl named Sandy (Barbara Hershey) befriends two teenagers, Peter (Richard Thomas) and Dan (Bruce Davison). The boys try to study Sandy's anatomy back in the dunes, but the explorations never go beyond the halter of her bikini. As summer passes, the trio becomes a tiny tribe, with increasingly hysterical rituals of confession and conformity. Always, violence is just a dare away. The group trains a sea gull to fly on a leash; when it bites Sandy, she kills it. Rhoda, a 15-year-old newcomer, tries to enter the triangle; she also becomes a victim when the tribal sensuality erupts into rape.
In its oscillation from poignance to shock, in bits of dialogue—as when Sandy chides Peter, "If you're gonna be thinking about my breasts all the goddam time"—Last Summer reveals its enormous debt to J. D. Salinger. Except for one performance, that debt goes unpaid. As Rhoda, Cathy Burns is the essential outsider—burdened with a squat figure, a wounded face and the incorruptible innocence of the born victim. She is exactly the kind of kid Holden Caulfield wanted to catch in the rye.