"Summer Hours," French writer/director Olivier Assayas' latest film, is a deceptively simple tale about the death of a matriarch, Hélène (veteran Edith Scob), who has spent the last third of her life devoted to the preservation of her uncle's art. Her small mansion in the country is a veritable shrine to his memory, filled with his own creations as well as the art he had loved and collected in his lifetime (much of it furniture). Yet unlike a museum, it's a living, breathing, organic space; when Hélène's children and grandchildren visit her in the beginning of the film, we discover the memories etched into the fabric of each piece. Priceless vases filled with flowers picked from the fields; rare art nouveau furniture cluttered with knick-knacks and stuffed with toys.

Hélène's death early on in the film brings her three children (played by Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier) back together again, forcing the adults to decide on the fate of the house-as-shrine. While we might expect a Bergman-esque torrent of spiritual introspection, familial in-fighting, and personal revelation, we instead find an all too familiar acquiescence to life's incessant realities. A fractured narrative ensues, reinforcing the power of the banalities of existence over the larger questions of our lives.

Assayes tells his story without any obvious didacticism, and cinematographer Eric Gautier's camera captures the dynamic relationships in the family with a balletic grace. Weaving and spinning around larger gatherings, we sense the motion and movement of a family thrust forward, while he treats smaller confrontations with intimate closeups, revealing the depth and nuance of the relationships.

"Summer Hours" is the second film commissioned by Paris's Musée d'Orsay, the famous museum built inside of the former railway station Gare d'Orsay. The first was last year's art-house sensation "Flight of the Red Balloon," and while both only nominally include the museum in their respective stories, "Summer Hours" features it much more prominently, though not necessarily flatteringly. As much of the family's art ends up in the museum, we see it stripped bare for display. Crowds of onlookers pass it by with barely a glance; the art's significance fades, just like the film's opening mirage.

Last Word:

A meditative tome on the relationship between life and art that offers abundant rewards, if few answers.

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Review By:
Matt Parker, Staff Writer

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