MOVIES
Summer Hours starts with the 70th birthday party of a wealthy family matriarch named Helene, in which her three grown children and their spouses and wives gather with their children on her magnificent country estate. Helene has devoted much of her life to preserving the heritage of her uncle, a famous deceased artist. During a quiet moment in the festivities, Helene takes her oldest son Frederic, played by Charles Berliner, into her study to discuss the division of the inheritance after her death. Frederic, of course, doesn't want to hear about it, but Helene insists on detailing what is to be done with the valuable furniture and other works of art created or collected by her uncle, and she also predicts that the old house will need to be sold.
After this long, beautiful sequence, there is a break, and when we return a year later, Helene has died, and the siblings gather for the funeral and to discuss arrangements. Frederic is very attached to the estate and doesn't want to sell. His sister Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) is a designer living in New York, and doesn't have much of a desire to visit France any more. The youngest, Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) works for a shoe company and is going to move to China with his family. Frederic is forced to agree to sell the house, and since he lives in France, he has to handle most of the details as well.
The rest of the film is the story of the strangely emotional process of disposing of all the possessions that are Helene's legacy. It's not a story of family quarreling—for the most part everyone stays grown-up, and they all love each other. Assayas is interested in the delicate intertwining of grief for the loss of a parent with the more subtle grief of letting go, both of one's old home and all the objects that symbolize the past. And as the film develops, another theme emerges as well—the loss of the sense of tradition itself in the midst of a modern world that erases boundaries.
The narrative and camerawork is graceful and fluid—besides the four main characters, there are other interesting figures, such as the family's elderly housekeeper Eloise, Frederic's teenage daughter who gets busted for shoplifting and possession of pot, and the solicitor and old friend of Helene's who reveals a painful family secret. This is a film that feels lived in, while at the same time there is the almost palpable sense of the influence of the past hovering above the characters. Ultimately it is the plight of the eldest son that takes center stage, and Berliner's performance is delicately expressive.
In my opinion, Olivier Assayas is one of the best film directors alive. He can do almost anything, and in Summer Hours he combines the depth of a novel with the lyric tone of a poem.
© Copyright 2012, KXCI
