Downton Abbey stars Dan Stevens and Dominic Cooper are going head to head as love rivals in the true story of painter A J — later Sir Alfred — Munnings
The £5 million film, Summer in February, has just finished shooting, with a final scene at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. It comes seven years after Stevens, 29, first promised to make the movie — long before he found TV fame as Downton’s Matthew Crawley.
Summer In February tells the story of Gilbert Evans, a sensitive, gentlemanly land agent in Lamorna, Cornwall, and Munnings, a charismatic hellraiser. Both fall for upper-class
artist Florence Carter-Wood in the years before the First World War.
Stevens, who admits to being in “a bit of a groove of playing rather soulful characters”, is Evans. Cooper, 33, who was Sky in Mamma Mia!, is Munnings. Emily Browning, 23, who starred in big-screen thriller Sucker Punch, plays Florence. She said her character was driven by wanting to escape her upper-class background: “She is genuinely in love with Gilbert but he represents what she is running from. Alfred appears to be everything she thinks she wants. He is free and a little crazy.”
During filming her co-stars became “like brothers”, she added: “Hanging out in Cornwall, we became like a family. But then you have to try to push that to one side and be nice and romantic and feel a chemistry on set.”
Stevens and Cooper proved bashful at the notion they might be heart-throbs and said they hoped the beautifully shot story would be the attraction.
The film is based on a book by English teacher Jonathan Smith, 70, who directed Stevens in Macbeth when the actor was 14 and at Tonbridge School in Kent. “He is a dear old mentor and friend who directed me in all my school plays,” said Stevens. “He had a great influence.”
A release date for the movie, directed by Christopher Menaul, is yet to be confirmed.
