SUMMER HOURS
Written & Directed by Olivier Assayas
Produced by Charles Gillibert, Marin Karmitz & Nathanaël Karmitz
Released by IFC Films
French with English subtitles
France. 102 min. Not Rated
With Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier, Edith Scob
 

The bonds of art and mortality anchor Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, which explores with supreme understatement a family's crises upon the death of its matriarch. After his crude, choppy recent films—Demonlover, Clean and Boarding Gate—Summer Hours returns the director to the classically elegant filmmaking style that informs his best films, the perceptive character studies Late August, Early September and Les Destinées.

Siblings Frédéric, Adrienne, and Jérémie must make monumental decisions concerning their family estate after their mother Hélène dies unexpectedly, not long after her 75th birthday. Frédéric, the oldest, is also the most conservative. An economist who lives in Paris with his wife and two teenage children, he is the most emotionally attached to the country house where their mother lived with her vast art collection, including paintings by Corot and Redon. Adrienne, the free-spirited middle daughter, lives in New York, often travels in her job as designer, and has pretty much cut off any sentimental attachment to the family heirlooms. Jérémie, the youngest, works for Puma in China. He, his wife, and their young children have detached themselves from France for a future in Asia. So as a practical matter, Jérémie—like his sister—would rather sell the house and their mother's collection of artworks than hold onto them for purely nostalgic reasons.

Throughout Summer Hours, Assayas demonstrates an empathy missing from his last few pictures. The new film utilizes Assayas' trademark roving camera, but with a refined visual style that correlates to these people's ordered lifestyle. It has all the earmarks of soap opera, which it might well have been if it was made in America; however, Assayas has art and culture in his bones. He seamlessly integrates this upper-class family's concerns about balancing their heritage with their everyday lives as they come to terms with the fact that their mother was all that bonded them to their childhood home.

Assayas frames Summer Hours with two sequences of the grandchildren at Hélène's house. In the beginning, the kids are simply enjoying the country, while the final scenes show Frédéric's teens and their friends partying one last time before the house is sold. Eric Gautier's probing camera follows the partiers as they blast rap and rock music, smoke pot, and swim in a nearby pond, until zeroing in on Frédéric's daughter, who reminisces about her grandmother. It's a poignant moment that brings the concerns of Summer Hours full circle with a depth of feeling usually associated with such masters as Jean Renoir and Yasujiro Ozu (two obvious Assayas influences).

The remarkably cohesive cast is led by Charles Berling (Frédéric), Juliette Binoche (Adrienne), Jérémie Renier (Jérémie), and Edith Scob (Hélène). They comprise an entirely believable movie family. Best about the memorable Summer Hours is that its subtle dissection of the loss of a cultured family's past will make it a less obvious candidate for an Americanized remake. For that, along with Assayas' wonderfully layered drama, we can be thankful. Kevin Filipski
May 15, 2009