Summer Hours

A film set in a French country house. Hélène is turning seventy-five. Her three children and grandchildren come to the summer house; the table is laid, people walk in the garden. The house is not ordinary. Inside there are paintings, two glass vases, a mahogany desk and an archive left by her uncle, who was a well known painter. Hélène talks to her daughter. She tries to explain what should be done after she dies and nobody wants to hear it. Then she dies. From there the film is a story of division. The three siblings sit in a room and decide what to do. Frédéric wants to keep the house. His siblings do not; one lives in America, one in China, and neither needs a house in France. The house is sold. The objects go to a museum. What the narrative is interested in is not inheritance but meaning slipping: the same vase that held flowers in the house becomes an object behind glass in the museum, and the film shows this in a single scene. The housekeeper's line is its most affecting. Éloïse worked in the house for years and is told to choose something as a keepsake; she takes the most valuable piece without knowing its worth. The last section belongs to the young. The grandchildren give a party in the emptied house and the narrative closes with continuity rather than mourning. There is a commission behind the production. The Musée d'Orsay proposed that Assayas make a film using objects from its collection for its twentieth anniversary, and some of the works in the film really are from it. Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier and Edith Scob are in the cast. Olivier Assayas wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes calm family drama and is curious about the relation between objects and memory. Who it is not for: anyone expecting conflict; nobody fights, everyone behaves reasonably, and the film is deliberately without incident.