User reviews

SUMMER HOURS (L'heure d'été) is more of a reverie than a story for a film. This very French film touches the subject of family - the meaning and influence and contradictions - in an examination of coping with the death of the matriarch and her wishes versus the intentions of the siblings. Writer/Director Olivier Assayas seems less interested in allowing the viewer to get to know the individuals of the story than he is with conveying the vacuum of death and the aftermath of dealing with it in the setting of a family of grown children.

The film opens as it closes - in summer with scenes awash with French countryside living. Three children have gathered with their families for the 75th birthday of their mother, the elegant and wistful Hélène (Edith Scob) whose adoration of her famous painter uncle presses on her mind as she senses her own mortality. One son, Frédéric (Charles Berling) is her confidant in hearing her wishes about the dispersal of the house and furniture and art that mean so much to her. Her other son Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) has traveled from his new home in China where his tennis shoes company has stationed him: his fondness for his mother is apparent but his need for financing makes him view the wishes of his mother in a more practical light. Her daughter Adrienne (Juliet Binoche) has traveled from her preferred new home in New York City and views the wishes of her mother with a similar practical and somewhat distant stance.

Some time later the mother dies and the children gather for the funeral and for the discussion of what to do with the 'inheritance'. The interplay between the sentimental Frédéric and the pragmatic Adrienne and Jérémie bring about questions of placing the art and furniture with museums and the selling of the house of their youth. Gentle undertones of sibling relationships and questions about the quality of memorabilia versus the practicality of getting on with living provide the final movement. The film ends in a coda that returns the younger generation (Hélène's grandchildren) to the beauty of the gardens of the now empty French house. The thread that holds the film together is the presence of the longtime housekeeper Éloïse (Isabelle Sadoyan), the gentle being that understands it all.

Though the film is beautifully acted and photographed there is very little development of the various characters, a fact that leaves the viewer with the feeling of simply peeking through a windowpane to watch a French family walk through a moment in life and in death. Nothing much happens here: the film is more a reverie, but a very beautiful one to relax and enjoy. Grady Harp

Hélène Berthier, niece of a famous painter, receive her children and grand children for her birthday, and take this opportunity to talk about her death, and what will happen to her uncle's collection. Once dead, Frederic, her elder son think that they'll keep the house as it his, but his brother and sister don't live in France anymore and think that it would more intelligent to sell. When I was expecting the family to be destroyed around this heritage, nothing like that happens, they all accept and the rarity in the 21 century of families having things that could belong to museums takes an end. This film is extremely beautiful, for many reasons. First because it can touch everyone who lost someone and saw what was theirs, being sold and put in many places. Then this film is beautiful because it shows also how everyone accepts that but also suffers from what they can't keep together: family, past, heritage! To me it shows better than any Amelie, or La Vie en Rose what being French means: being thorn between the heritage of a culture and an appeal of modernity, wanting to keep your roots alive and spread toward the world. This is funny how this thought came through my mind "Why do they want to live in Beijing or New York?" suddenly being in the film, that seemed weird to me when I just lived two years and a half in London, and probably won't stay in my old country forever. The actors are great, Edith Scob playing the extremely classy Hélène, and Charles Berling, Jeremy Regnier and Juliette Binoche are very touching and human. It's important to say, that the object are also characters in this story, and it's scary at the end to see them in the museum d'Orsay, how they lost life or are recovering some. It's important to say that this film was a project with the museum, and I think that it is brilliant to make us pay attention to the details of these objects when generally we're not. Question: is art made for museum or to live with it? People wouldn't try to steal them from museum if the answer was museums… If you want to see my other critics: http://www.silverparticules.blogspot.com

Assayas says this film more or less sums up all his work so far, and that may surprise some, since it is so different, so indistinguishable in many ways from the work of other contemporary French filmmakers who deal with middle class life. And the impulse behind the film was something trivial and occasional, a request from the Musée d'Orsay to do something, as they'd asked Hou Hsiau-hsien (the result was Hou's 'Flight of the Red Balloon'). Hou's film uses the d'Orsay so incidentally I can hardly remember how it fits in; but Assayas takes the idea of a museum quite seriously and literally. His story is about a family, and a mother who dies in her mid-seventies leaving behind a house and a collection of museum pieces, works of art, furniture, and fine objects.

We begin with a scene quite conventional in French films: the seasonal family gathering. The 'Heure d'été' (summer hour), is a moment when adult siblings Adrienne (Juliette Binoche, the star of Hou's 'Balloon,' though including her again was not a d'Orsay requirement), Frédéric (Charles Berling, his third time in an Assayas film, and a kind of alter ego here), and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) with parts of their families, have come to the family's beautiful country place to celebrate the 75th birthday of their mother Hélène (Edith Scob). Hélène is one of those perfectly slim, elegant, erect French women. She spends a lot of time telling Frédéric, to his annoyance, about the valuables the children will inherit when she dies, including a handsome 19th-century desk, display case, and other objects, the sketchbooks of her famous uncle, the artist Jean Berthier, two Corot paintings, and two large sketches by Odilon Redon. They will want to dispose of them all, she says, and the house. She has certain requirements. The D'Orsay wants the furniture; the sketchbooks must be kept together. Some objects she is giving to him.

After this sequence, Hélène is dead, perhaps a year later. She has gone to San Francisco for the start of a major traveling exhibition of Berthier's work, and there has been a presentation in France on his personal life (including the fact that he was gay, and other controversial information) which shook her considerably. And her involvement in the production of a book, a catalog, and the traveling exhibition all wore her down and left her devastated and empty when they were completed.

It is against Frédéric 's wishes, but when the siblings meet again, it's obvious Hélène was right and the possessions and the house must be sold, and the old housekeeper, Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) must be released. Jérémie, who works for a company that makes running shoes, is going to take his wife and kids to live in China permanently. Adrienne, who is a designer, lives in New York, and she's going to marry her American boyfriend and stay there. They can't go back to the country house regularly any more. It seems Frédéric gets a raw deal, because he, whom the dispersal of family heirlooms hurts the most, is going to have to deal with the nuts and bolts of the process, because he's the only one who lives in France. But that's the way it is, and what's more Jérémie needs money to set up in his new life in China.

Assayas goes into the details, even showing a meeting of the curators and administrators concerned with the donation at the Musée d'Orsay. They are particularly interested in the furniture and the Redons (the Corots are sold elsewhere). One official objects that these things will just go into storage.

This is a suavely composed picture, but it still comes across as the most elegant of instructional films, if such existed for showing at posh schools to teach children of the wealthy how to deal with inheritances in the world of globalization. Yes, globalization is what Assayas is talking about, though the word is used in his comments on the film, not in the screenplay itself. Assayas' didacticism this time is admirably straightforward, and at the same time, the ideas are presented in what for Assayas is an unusually warm context. One of the touchstones is the old housekeeper, Eloise, who returns to the house when it's been shut up, and goes to Hélène's grave to deposit flowers. The important point is that this is not about the traditional family squabble over inheritance. Though Frédéric is saddened, there is no argument, and he and Jérémie pointedly (maybe too pointedly) part friends. There are other little details that are accurate and practical. It's pointed out that Adrienne's plan to sell the sketchbooks in New York through Christie's won't work. The French government is unlikely to let them out of the country. Frédéric is away a lot too, and for whatever reason he has to pick up his teenage daughter, caught stealing, and holding pot. But the final scene, which again is warmly didactic, shows that daughter with her boyfriend and a bunch of her friends invading the old house one last time, saying a sad farewell..

As I'm not the first to comment, this is one of Assayas' simplest films, but it's also one of his most touching and meaningful. Instructional film though it may be, it deals with subject matter that can move the hardest heart. If you don't care about losing a parent, you will surely be touched with the thought of losing the places of your childhood--and family money. If love won't get you, money will. And there is a final meditation by Frédéric at the D'Orsay where he and his wife Lisa (Dominique Reymond) look at the objects they've donated (not in storage) and consider the other trade-off: a contribution to history and the public's culture has been made, but the objects are like prisoners now, shut up in a cold space, robbed of their human context in a family's life.

Hélène is the matriarch of an extended scattered family. She lives in the country outside of Paris where she has kept valuable art from a famous artist uncle. She has two sons and a daughter. The family gathers for her 75th birthday but at the end of the day, everybody leaves. The family has worked to keep the artist's legacy including a new art book and a world tour where Hélène does talks. Later, she passes and the family has to deal with the inheritance. The eldest Frédéric Marly wants to preserve the home. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) is a famous designer in NYC. Jérémie is in China as a supervisor in a shoe company. They have to come to terms with the lost of their treasured memories.

It's French. It's talky. It's sincerely adult. It's family. When the siblings are all in one place, there is a feeling of a real family talking in a real way. The movie can drift from scene to scene. There is one standout among the third generation. She closes the movie in a profound scene. It's a family film in the truest sense.

Up until now, you may have seen films that are told through the eyes of a specific character, a child or even a dog. However this film achieves the impossible, it tells the story of generations through the eyes of the objects! The film opens with a large family gathering in a gorgeous old house located in French countryside. The house lies in the middle of a large garden and hosts beautiful antique furniture the owner, mother of three middle aged children, inherited from her uncle. A year later, she dies and the children have to decide about the fate of the house and the furniture.

Anyone who has lost a parent or an elder family member possibly has gone through these difficulties depicted so naturally in the film. However, the movie goes beyond the initial thoughts and feelings. Delicate questions asked by this movie are multifaceted and explore the effects of capitalist globalization on generations.

Those objects have memories in them. When they are left to a museum, they seemingly belong to the society as whole but to no one at the same time.

The elder brother, professor of economy, who lives in France wants to preserve the house, he wants to stick to his roots, to family memories but his brother and sister want to follow their careers in China and US. Yes, by doing so they live in the moment and yes, they are not confined to France and yes, the whole world is theirs but they are also left with nothing. Like objects displayed in the museum.

And this duality lives on until the ironic ending, which can be interpreted as optimistic or pessimistic by viewers even tough pessimistic tone is definitely more prevalent.

Beautiful acting by Binoche, Charles Berling, Edith Scob and wonderful directing and writing by Assayas. This movie is just lifelike, simple but complex!

Interesting, gentle sad (but not depressing) story of the inevitability of loss and chance.

Three siblings decide whether to keep or sell their mother's country home and art collection after her death, exploring how we give 'things' meaning, and how that meaning changes due to context, generation, and what we need from them.

But while the ideas are intriguing, and the acting good it never quite reached the deepest level of feeling or thoughtfulness for me.

Called a masterpiece by a number of critics, and something close by others, I cant quite go there, but it is an intelligent, quietly moving experience, that I'll probably revisit yet again, since it grew on me on a second viewing.

This film has some things going for. The "summer home" which is the centrepiece of this film is lovely indeed. The story surrounds three siblings whose mother dies and they must deal with both the "summer home" and its contents. It's all done very humanly and without the buffoonery found in most "Hollywood films".

The pace is slow and no big secrets are revealed. I got the feeling that if you haven't gone through the process of a parent dying and selling off the ancestral home this film would be far less appealing. I've gone through this whole ordeal and felt the film did capture the essence of it. But at times it was kind of like an "Antique Road Show" and my attention was starting to wander. Also the ending was somewhat trivial.

Outside of the few film segments featuring the exuberance and playfulness of children and adolescents, the remainder of this film consists largely of half-baked characters and unsurprising dialog -- involving an upper-crust 'art society'-type family and their coveted material things (of inheritance). I was unable to get behind the (too predictable, ho-hum) characters, unoriginal story line, and tiring moving camera: I dropped out after about 45 minutes of careful viewing and then selectively fast-forwarded through the rest. This is one of those films which seems to have surfaced from a combination of ample production assets plus a lack of creative vision. Furthermore, many cinephiles like me are tired of encountering 'too familiar' actors in films; instead, we much prefer to be exposed to fresh, even unprofessional, talent. Major film directors Rossellini, Pasolini, and Bunuel, for example, were fully aware of the filmic (and economic) value of using unknown/lesser-known actors -- and they did so often to great effect. Binoche and Berling are fine actors, but as with Tom Hanks and Gwyneth Paltrow, hey, we're just plain tired of the lack of intrigue such overly recognizable (and therefore somewhat predictable) actors bring to the screen. On a related note, Alan Ball, the academy award-winning screenwriter of American Beauty, once said, "I can't write characters that have no flaws; they don't seem real." Summer Hours does eventually expose character flaws (or call it human nature), but the flaws are embodied by characters of a kind that discerning viewers may find difficult to believe, care about, or relate to. Not enough existential intrigue or human diversity here: too much stale white bread to chew on.

The first 30 minutes of the movie is good. You can tell that the actors in the movie are talented. The emotion, the feeling is good. But the plot is awful. This movies does not have a plot. A mother dies and the children has to share what is left. There is no drama. Only one side story that tells, the grand child smokes pot. There are some few things, where you think, YES now the story steps up. But no, it doesn't happen. The movie was waste of time in every way!

This movie, does not want to shock us, it does not want to make a point. It does not want to prove anything. It does not want to teach it, and it does not even want to to entertain us. Greatly disappointed.

The lament of the Marlys can never strike any resonance in Hong Kong. We live in constant construction and demolition. Old houses? Old vases? Old painting? No one cares about them unless they sell well with good money return. Embracing the new (mostly technology and money), living the moment, forgetting the past, pulling down the old buildings for new glassy-window high rise (= money, money, money), dumping all those used once…, our usual behaviour. Past is past, never mind. Out of sight, out of mind, no regret of its disappearance, no matter that's people, object, time or whatever. Sorry, sorry, in a city of super fast pace, no time and no need and no habit to think about history, to study history. Today, nostalgia, heritage are too expensive to a place where people only live "this absolute right moment", so, don't ask me to plan for the next and don't ask me to reflect the past. We only look forward and forget all that has happened.

A 100% correct decision of the brothers and sisters: send every "valuable" object to the museum because today, no one, normal people, intends to live in a museum.

This is a haunting film about the distorting effects of monetary exchange on family life and the cohesion of society. It will give food for thought to anyone with elderly parents who may have accumulated a few works of art during their lifetime. At a time of grief, the bereaved have difficult questions to answer. The film-goer is left wondering, "What would I have done if I had been in a similar situation?" It is not a film to be quickly forgotten. Although the issue of the fate of the family's country house may be a specifically French theme, others dealt with are more universal and have a deep resonance for anyone with elderly relations. Juliette Binoche may be the name that draws film-goers in, but there is fine acting from all the performers.

Summer Hours (French: L'Heure d'été) (2008) Director: Oliver Assayas 6/10 Ensemble cast with impressive performances, As much about the family members as it is about the priceless artifacts they donate to the Musée d'Orsay. A meditative film on inheritance, heritage, and loss, Subtle in its merits that take patience and investment to appreciate? Or merely a pretentious film about the bourgeoisie's materialism?

Gogyohka literally translates to "five-line poem." An alternative to the tanka form, the gogyohka has very simple rules. Five lines with one phrase per line. What comprises a phrase? Eye of the beholder- or the poet, in this case. #Gogyohka #PoemReview

Summer Hours is a French film in French with English subtitles. It focuses on a family who do not see each other very often due to work and several of the siblings living overseas, but they are reunited and have to deal with an estate and the many belongings of one of the family members. Going through the belongings and seeing their old summer house brings back memories and has an effect on each person individually and some show it more than others and we also see how the many prized pieces of art belonging to the deceased go through being evaluated and how the siblings are going to part with them, or keep them for sentimental value. A lot of these decisions and choices and a look at a once close family who is now reunited is discussed in this film. Summer Hours is not one of your fast moving action packed films, but instead focuses a lot on characters and their lives and how they interact with the ones around them. The performances are all very strong here as is the character development and the dialogue, so for me it was an absolute joy to watch realistic characters deal with real life situations and emotions. The artistic and cultural belongings in the film that is a large focus of the story is also an interesting touch to the story because it really shows some different sides of the characters and for anyone interested in antiques, or art of any kind it is fascinating to watch seeing the impact they have on the museums and the appraisers. While the film does deal with family issues, I do want to stress that it is not a really dysfunctional family that we are observing here and it is not a depressing film to watch. On the contrary it sometimes left me quite uplifted to see how things are passed on from generation to generation and how even the simplest of things can bring back the memories of the ones we love and the times that are very dear to us. The siblings do get along and they do care for each other, but they are all older now and some have families and a lot of them have high demanding jobs and live elsewhere, so they do not really have time for each other, not because they don't care, but because their lives have taken them elsewhere, which I think is a realistic and honest way of looking at families because after all doesn't situations like this happen to us all eventually? There is definitely a lot the film leaves us to think about and I think it also allows us to appreciate our own families and the things that make them special and what brings us together and what will give us everlasting memories. Summer Hours does this without being overly sentimental, or preachy, but it still leaves the viewer with a lot to think about and to cherish about what one just watched. It left me with a peaceful and tranquil feeling and I really enjoyed watching these characters and learning more about them. A moving and intriguing tale that is one of this year's best films.

I knew nothing of this film when I walked into the theater. It was nothing like I anticipated. "Claire's Knee" perhaps? What unfolds through the wonder of Olivier Assayas construction, direction and camera work was an equivalent to Chekhov for me. As generations and values change, what gets lost and left behind isn't only the contents of a summer house (which is the focus of the film). Values of and connections to the past dwindle in the summer twilight, and there's panic, guilt, mourning, release and the dawn of another generation unwound on the screen.

My one complaint is the length of the beautiful end piece of the film. It introduces a new set of characters to a degree that I was left wanting more. I would have preferred the film ending with the housekeeper rattling the windows to regain entrance, but this is a small complaint to a masterful film, that's beautifully acted and hypnotic to watch.

I overheard someone sitting near me say to the person who had dragged him to the film, "I'll be sleeping through this one." Curious, I looked over two-thirds into the film, and he wasn't asleep; he was spellbound, along with the rest of us.

There's a plot here, but not much drama because there's no real conflict. Although the oldest son Frederic (Charles Berling) wants to keep their late mother's idyllic country cottage an hour's drive from Paris, filled with art nouveau furniture, bric-a brac and paintings, the other two children, Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) and Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) don't have the same attachment to the place, having formed other attachments and moved overseas. But Frederic doesn't want to fight his siblings and acquiesces, so the place is sold and the more valuable pieces snapped up by the Musee D'Orsay (which helped produce the film) in lieu of death duties. Frederic's wish that the place remain with the family was doomed from the start because as the family lawyer points out Mother (an elegant Edith Scob) refused to do any estate planning which might have left enough money for Frederic to buy the others out. Instead the house is sold and the Musee gets the best pieces which become cold, pristine museum objects instead of fondly regarded family furniture.

Despite the lack of drama, this is a very evocative film for anyone who has had to deal with the aftermath of their parent's death. . The disposal of physical objects also symbolizes the weakening of family feeling. Mother had artistic connections – her favorite uncle was a well-known painter who left her the house and contents – but little of this sensibility is passed on – witness the grandchildren's reaction to the Corot landscapes in the house. The film is beautifully photographed and the hand-held camera work entirely appropriate although occasionally claustrophobic. The ending is surprisingly upbeat – it seems at least some of the new generation have inherited some finer feelings.

One thing I did discover backgrounding this movie is that French inheritance law actually fixes the minimum amount that must be left to the family. In a situation like this with three children each child must get at least 25% of the estate, with the remaining 25% to be left at the testator's discretion. Also it seems that family companies are widely used to avoid inheritance taxes; there are also other dodges including joint ownership and the "tontine", whereby the last survivor gets the lot (remember that great British comedy of the 60s, "The Wrong Box"). It is of course not in Musee D'Orsay's interest to canvass such matters. Down here in Australia we abolished inheritance taxes 30 years ago – makes life, and death, a lot simpler.

A marvellously descriptive examination of the power of memories, and the pull of the present in the eventual destruction of those memories.

I decided, principally, to see this film because of the presence of Juliette Binoche in the cast but, even tough hers is a strongly written character, and the acting of Binoche is of it's usual highest standard, it was the heartbreak portrayed by the oldest, and youngest, members of the extended family that really affected me the most.

The most heartbreaking moments came towards the very end, and were played out without being overly sentimentalised. You are left wondering at the uselessness of hanging onto the past when all that are left are museum pieces.

Maybe it was the constant mention of designer art's items, supposedly of great value and extremely beautiful, which I found inane. Or it may have been its slowness, or its lack of emotional meaning to me. The case is that I think this film lacks "soul", "purpose" or even "beauty". I liked the way the 3 generations view differently their relationship with things. The older generation valued and lived with Art. The middle aged successful professionals strive between personal attachment to one item or another, and their need for money to develop their professional and personal lives. And the young... the only part that I thought meant something -although it wasn't very nice to look at- was near the end, at the teenager's party, one of the grandsons said, when confronted to the Corot paintings: (uninvolved and trying to be diplomatic) "they belong to another age". His parent Frédéric didn't seem to notice, but there lied the heart of the issue. The youngsters play ball inside the formerly beautiful French country mansion, listen to horrible rap speaking of social violence, or bubble gum female pop, smoke marijuana, drink heavily, behave and look like they didn't care anything for whatever could be inside the D'Orsay museum or something.

Demagogy: Of course on the other hand you have the daughter, who besides shoplifting and having awful manners shows she's sensitive for her grandma and has longings for the house. I thought that unlikely and unwarranted by what we see of her before. And the about 5 times we get to see "the phone that the sons gave for the mum and didn't fix for her". Hey, who hasn't forgotten something for somebody who loves, specially when in a hurry and while dealing with difficult issues like succession planning? I think I'd be hard to accuse specially the emotional Frédéric of not loving the elegant Éloïse! Or the maid "attempting in vain to enter the mansion, and then, beleaguered, leaving some flowers in her tomb". OK, she is faithful even on the afterlife, but I found the portrayal of it rather leftish like "only the poor have true feelings, and don't care for the money (when she takes 'only a flower pot') and are well bred (the moving letter even the devoted son didn't make himself time to answer) and who have perfectly good feelings (the emotional relative with the cab, leaving her at her mono block housing). By the way, Isabelle Sadoyan plays the part of Éloïse very convincingly! A distinguished lady who says, at the most beautiful image of the film by far: "When I die, so will my secrets, that interest no one" (the scene with blue lighting, at dusk). Her character has some Chabrolesque undertones. I mean "the upper classes who hold some secrets in the sake of moral respectability", "big mansions of the elite holding rather selfish people". Her daughter Adrienne seemed to take after the mother in the manipulativeness and ironic remarks like "this is a true present" and her rant against globalization and Jérémie's business. The mother at least has class! Anyway, Binoche is convincing at her unlikeable character, totally different to her usual "beauty at 40" ones.

I enjoyed the director's Les Destinées sentimentales way more. At least that was a true melodrama, with beautiful settings and old fashioned feelings. I'm afraid he could have done here something more authentic,

for instance, as "the decadence of values" -like the house itself-. Instead, he obviously feels like Frédéric who says to his wife something awfully stupid about works of art "having to live in the proprietor's house, for the seem 'trapped' in a museum". Even if it's true that most museum goers don't care much for what they're force fed like hamster: a) They could have sold them. The high tax they have to endure is an accident of French bureaucracy, not a moral imperative. Besides, b) how many people enjoy works that way (in private collections, like F. extols)? For instance, how many people would have enjoyed, say, this wooden desk had it remained at their haughty house? So if you want to be a socialist like most French intellos do, I think it'd be at least more coherent that they accept "socialized" art instead of harping on a romantic vision of "art for those who 'really value it' that besides being rather arbitrary and potentially 'fascist', it is rather self-centered and childish.

Overall, I think this film delivers much less than what it promises. But, as always, it's better than the average US blockbuster, that's for sure!