 Remembrance of things past . . . |
| Review Date: May 17, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ronald Scheer, Los Angeles |
This elegiac French film concerns the passing of one generation to the next in a family of three siblings left with the complicated inheritance of a mother whose country house is filled with the memories and belongings of a great-uncle who was a well-known artist. Richly detailed, Proustian evocation of a moment in time where past and present meet - before time moves on.
This is a multi-layered film, interested in the interconnections between overlapping lives, while taking on many themes from the meaning that possessions assume in our lives to the responsibilities we owe to the past and to the memories and wishes of our forebears. It raises issues of lasting vs ephemeral values, esthetic vs practical, monetary vs sentimental, materialism vs intangibles like loyalty, respect, passion, tradition. It tantalizes with the expectation of family secrets that are never quite revealed. It luxuriates in the languor of French countryside at the height of summer.
While the dilemma - what to do with the the art collection of a dead artist - suggests a kind of high-culture perspective on the subject, the film keeps bringing us down to earth with its interest in the conflicts that might exist between any family members left to sort out the belongings of a dead parent, while needing to get on with their lives. The closing scenes are a brilliant coda to the way the dilemma is resolved - the central characters are left behind as we follow the next generation - teenagers invading the abandoned country house for a last weekend of partying, their attention focused completely on the present and the beckoning future.
This is a wise and thoughtful film especially for older adults. See it with someone who has lived a good deal of life, and the two of you will have much to reflect on and comment about. |
This film is about all of Life
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| Review Date: April 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: J. Preston, San Juan Mountains |
I agree with most of what the other reviewers have said about this film. This is a wonderful film - full of insights about humanity, family, Life and Love.
However, I think this film has much more to offer than just insights about memories, or generations, or possessions . . . .
It is the second in a series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, after The Flight of the Red Balloon. Flight Of The Red Balloon [DVD] WS, Juliette Binoche
This film is a "map" of modern human consciousness.
It starts with a French family gathering in the provences at their family home. The aging mother, now 75 years old, played by lovely and charming French actress Edith Scob, has gathered with her children for a birthday. Her children have come from their careers, all over the world, to be with her. During the course of the celebration, they begin exchanging memories, sentiments, the realities of fulfilling careers in a modern global economy, and, the importance of their love and sentiment for each other.
In the wake of the mother's demise, the family explores the values that they hold most dearly. As all of us must face, in our modern lives, they make compromises so that they may continue with their careers, their global pursuits, and their relationships outside of the family. The denouement arrives when they decide to sell their mother's considerable estate, and, donate many of her objets d'art to the Musée d'Orsay.
The film witnesses the resolution of their grief, fears, hopes and dreams, as they gradually let go of the art that their mother had collected, and, which had surrounded them when they were children.
Juliette Binoche (as a blonde) is no less than brilliant in this performance. In many ways, it involved another enactment of her extraordinary, and award-winning, performance in "Bleu", in the well-known and respected French trilogy - Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge, by Kiezlowski. Three Colors Trilogy (Blue / White / Red)
This film exlplores all of our feelings, spirit, and thoughts, as all of us now struggle for identity in a global conscioussness, fast becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller . . . .
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Remembrance of things past . . .
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| Review Date: May 17, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ronald Scheer, Los Angeles |
This elegiac French film concerns the passing of one generation to the next in a family of three siblings left with the complicated inheritance of a mother whose country house is filled with the memories and belongings of a great-uncle who was a well-known artist. Richly detailed, Proustian evocation of a moment in time where past and present meet - before time moves on.
This is a multi-layered film, interested in the interconnections between overlapping lives, while taking on many themes from the meaning that possessions assume in our lives to the responsibilities we owe to the past and to the memories and wishes of our forebears. It raises issues of lasting vs ephemeral values, esthetic vs practical, monetary vs sentimental, materialism vs intangibles like loyalty, respect, passion, tradition. It tantalizes with the expectation of family secrets that are never quite revealed. It luxuriates in the languor of French countryside at the height of summer.
While the dilemma - what to do with the the art collection of a dead artist - suggests a kind of high-culture perspective on the subject, the film keeps bringing us down to earth with its interest in the conflicts that might exist between any family members left to sort out the belongings of a dead parent, while needing to get on with their lives. The closing scenes are a brilliant coda to the way the dilemma is resolved - the central characters are left behind as we follow the next generation - teenagers invading the abandoned country house for a last weekend of partying, their attention focused completely on the present and the beckoning future.
This is a wise and thoughtful film especially for older adults. See it with someone who has lived a good deal of life, and the two of you will have much to reflect on and comment about. |
a house, a home, and a family history
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| Review Date: June 2, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Daniel B. Clendenin, www.journeywithjesus.net |
| This film opens with three generations of a French family enjoying the summer in the matriarch's country home. Kids scream and dogs bark. To Frederic, the only one of Helene's three children that still lives in France, she insists upon talking about what to do with the house and its considerable artistic contents after she is gone. After all, she's devoted much of her life to keeping the memory of her uncle, a famous French artist-collector, by preserving this house with his works. Frederic assures her it will be so, for he too wants to keep the house for future generations. But Jeremie lives in Beijing making sneakers and Adrienne lives in New York; they admit that they are likely never to return to France, and that they care nothing for the house. They need the money from the estate sale. After Helene dies and the contents are auctioned to collectors and museums, we're shocked to see the obvious, that a vase lovingly filled with fresh flowers by the house keeper Eloise becomes an inanimate object in a museum. In some significant way the house made a home for the family, but now it is gone. And as the final scene suggests, it's impossible to freeze history and hold on to an idealized and idyllic notion of what constitutes family. In French with English subtitles. |
Low-Key Drama of One Family's Legacy Is a Window on French Identity Crisis.
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| Review Date: May 5, 2010 |
| Reviewer: mirasreviews, McLean, VA USA |
Writer and director Olivier Assayas lends his talent for natural dialogue to "Summer Hours" (L'heure d'été), a low-key family drama that reflects on a growing apathy towards a stagnating culture and economy in France. Helene (Edith Scob) is a family matriarch and proud preserver of her uncle Paul Berthier's memory. Berthier was a famous painter, and Helene is dedicated to his legacy. For her 75th birthday, her three grown children, their spouses, and children reunite at the family's country home. Helene feels she has little time left and wants her eldest son Frederic (Charles Berling) to understand that he is free to sell the house and art collection when she is gone. But Frederic hopes to preserve it for her grandchildren, even though his brother Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) and sister Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) live overseas and don't share his sentimentality.
A less thoughtful writer might have pitted Frederic's values against those of his siblings and had them yelling at each other. Assayas doesn't. He's making a down-to-earth film about a group of people who are all trying to be reasonable. It is essentially a series of conversations but does not feel as "talky" as many French films do, because the dialogue is not pretentious or self-conscious. These people are very listenable. Helene is losing interest in life, but she is more realistic about how the world will work in her absence than her children are. Frederic, the only child to make his life in France, sees his history slipping away, leaving little for his own children. Jeremie and Adrienne see their future and their family's elsewhere, where dusty objets d'art and tales of Paul Berthier will not be relevant. They understand one another perfectly, but that doesn't change their perspectives.
"Summer Hours" would be just a naturalistic family drama were it not for its allusions to the current crises of French culture. Jeremie and Adrienne are among a growing number of French expatriates relocating in search of economic opportunity. Jeremie works for Puma in China; Adrienne designs tableware in New York. They have fled stagnation in France. Not coincidentally, Frederic is a Parisian economist of somewhat passive ideology. Museum curators are worried that Helene's collection will leave France. By their nature, they are less concerned with creating a future in France than with keeping the past there. And so the small drama of dispensing of one woman's belongings reflects the dilemma that younger generations of French face in a perpetually sluggish economy, where basic cultural assumptions are being called into question. Assayas' quiet exploration is sympathetic and subtly critical. |
A simple film about the loss of who we are
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| Review Date: April 24, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Gary L. Whalen, Texas |
| "Summer Hours" is the best movie I've seen in years. Reviews speak of "globalization" and its effect, but I see this movie moving well beyond that. A summer house, expensive art objects, furniture, family members, and even simple kitchen items and cubboards are bound together by memory and emotions and in fact are given meaning by those memories and emotions over time. But what if the history of something is lost or forgotten or, worse, dismissed? Everything that makes us who we are can be lost in a generation. Those things that bind a family together--places, things, and shared memory that weave together and define a family--can so easily drift into oblivion, and when that happens what becomes of the family? And so too, what becomes of a people? What becomes of a nation? What becomes of a civilization? For me this movie is about such a notion. |
Criterion Collection Edition Delivers
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| Review Date: April 16, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Cubist, United States |
Writer/director Olivier Assayas does an excellent job creating the relaxed vibe of a family reunion with kids playing boisterously in the background with authentic-sounding conversations, like the playful way siblings insult each other but with a spiteful subtext familiar to anyone who has a brother and/or sister. Summer Hours also addresses the inevitable mortality of one's parents - something most of us will have to face at one point in our lives. Assayas' film is about many things, most notably the importance of family and the loss of a loved one. When a parent dies you start to take stock of your own life as you become aware of your own mortality.
There is an interview with Olivier Assayas that was conducted in January 2010 especially for this DVD. He talks about Summer Hours in relation to some of his other films. With this film he wanted to make a simple story set in France and explore subject matter familiar to him. Assayas talks about the influence of Jean Renoir's films on his own work. He speaks quite eloquently about the themes his film explores.
"Making-of" is a 26-minute documentary featuring interviews with Assays and actors Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche. There's plenty of footage of Assayas working with his cast and crew on the set of the film. The director talks about his working methods and what he expects from his actors.
"Inventory" is a 50-minute documentary that examines the film's approach to the art on display in Paris' Musee d'Orsay. Originally, the museum wanted to celebrate its 20th anniversary by having several filmmakers shoot a small film with the museum featured in it. Assayas was approached and ended up turning his into a feature-length film which became Summer Hours.
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