Juliette Binoche Movie:

Summer Hours [Theatrical Release] Reviews:
Death Be Not Proud
2009-08-13 - At 75 years old, Helene, (Edith Scob), has left express instructions to her three adult children on what to do with her vast collection of valuable art and country home when she dies. She is also wise to realize her wishes may not be met, foreseeing her children's indifference to her beloved collection, and their own global routine of daily living, which won't include the care and upkeep of a lovely and rustic French country home rich in familial history. She tells all this to her children during her 75th birthday get-together, as if leaving them to choose between the lady or the tiger.

For anyone forced to deal with a deceased parent's estate, director Olivier Assayas' examination of the cycle of life in one French family will strike a nerve of gentle guilt. While the matriarch is alive, the three adult children have no intention of disrupting the generational passing of precious heirlooms, but upon her death, the impracticality of maintaining a country home and possessing museum quality artwork transposes itself. With a degree of reluctance they free the past and embrace the future, not greedily, but with a strong sense of family pride.

This is a quiet film, more a slice of life than story. The inanimate artwork and home furnishings breathe as much life as the characters; an ancient sculpture in restoration during a tour of the museum where the children will donate much of the artwork exudes, nearly glows with the expression of all that had fondled or looked upon it. The cast has a breezy natural style revealing layers of conflicting emotions - guilt and reverence, sadness and happiness, security and doubt, especailly Charles Berling as the oldest son and Dominique Reymond as his wife, who later view the mother's possessions displayed in a museum. It's cold, he says or something to that effect of his mother's once practical furnishings - it has no life, no purpose.

In French with English subtitles.

Comment dites-vous "tedious" en Français?
2009-07-26 - It's rather late to be posting this commentary, but it might be useful to anyone who missed the screening and is thinking of renting it or buying the DVD. This oeuvre was another in a series that the film critics seem to have skipped, but nonetheless write about as if they had seen it, repeating the same things that the distributor has written for the press, which is basically a synopsis of the movie. Their comments are repetitive and leave nothing to the imagination. You can read them everywhere, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury-News. And to that extent, they are accurate. Summer Hours is skin deep, and fairly predictable. Everything is staged for maximum eye appeal, with no rough edges. Yet it pretends to be naturel. Again we are treated to the usual cast of "normal French people": the secret lover of a great artist (their story is only talked about in gossipy terms), the "fashionable designer-consultant", "the handsome young globe trotting Nike shoe executive charged with expanding the business in La Chine", the brilliant, self-effacing economiste-intellectuelle whom we see criticized by another intellectuelle during a radio interview. And lest you think everything is just divine in these people's lives, the daughter of the economiste is picked up by the cops for shoplifting and possessing weed. The benignly paternal police let her, and him off with a warning. On the way home, the modest economist-father gently interrogates the daughter about the company she's been keeping, in bed and otherwise. Oh! those naughty French! Have I spoiled anything? Go see this if you want to sop up some of that whispy nostalgie intellectuelle , the precious gardens, the country home, the objets d'art, the product placements (I think Renault bankrolled this movie, with some help from the Musee d' Orsay.) But don't say I didn't warn you!

Interesting and in-depth, but extremely repetitive
2009-06-23 - I tend to read "French" in the description of a film and then overlook everything else about the film. I should remember to do as much research into a French film as any other.

"Summer Hours", stars Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier as siblings who bring their families to visit their mother/ grandmother at her country estate every summer. Mother takes her oldest son (Bierling) aside to give him her normal talk about her death and what he should do with all of the artworks and valuable objects in her house, annoying him enough to cause him to walk away. But she dies shortly after and the siblings have to deal with the estate and their past disagreements.

"Summer Hours" written and directed by Olivier Assayas ("Irma Vep") is, initially, an interesting film. An extremely meditative look at the relationship between the siblings and their mother, this depth provides the interest, holding our attention for a while.

But as the film progresses, it becomes episodic. And slow, repeating the themes over and over again.

The film opens with the entire clan invading grandmother's house in the country. The housekeeper seems a little overwhelmed, trying to keep the grandchildren from destroying the house, but she has been with the family for years, so she is used to the yearly invasion. Grandmother seems to welcome the activity, but becomes a little put out when she starts to open the gifts they have brought. Later, she corners her son and starts to give him a rundown of all of the valuable pieces in the house. He quickly becomes irritated; he has heard this before and doesn't like to hear her talk about death. There also seems to be friction between grandmother and her daughter (Binoche) who lives in America. The youngest son and his wife live in China, where the son runs a factory for Puma. Grandmother seems to be able to talk of little else other than her famous Uncle, a painter who will soon have a retrospective in San Francisco. Daughter tries to connect with her mother over this, but their appears to be too much bad blood, too much history.

This segment goes on for a while, and introduces us to each of the main characters in the story. When the various families leave, grandmother sits down and enjoys the peace and quiet. There is a slow fade to black and then we watch as the siblings gather for their mother's funeral. There are some interesting moments as we witness their grieving and how they start to deal with the loss of their mother. Then the conversation turns to the estate.

After some conversation, it seems like the estate becomes the only reason for the film to exist. This is what starts conversations between them. This is what drives the narrative; such as it is, forward. Maybe this is the point. Perhaps we are supposed to realize these siblings are not very close and only come together when they have to deal with family issues. This is made very clear, very quickly, yet we keep returning to it, we keep watching various scenes meant to illustrate this. It becomes repetitive.

Each time the image faded to black, I was ready for the film to end, but it quickly faded back and another chapter unfolded. This wouldn't be a bad method of storytelling, but the narrative doesn't really seem to move forward on a consistent basis.

And Binoche disappears for a lot of the film. The film really stars Charles Berling. He does a remarkably good job of playing the older brother, the patriarch of the family. You can see the weight of the world resting heavily on his shoulders and now that he is the only sibling living in France, he has to deal with their mother's affairs. His relationship with his wife and teenage daughter helps to break up the monotony of the rest of the story, giving us a glimpse into life in modern France.

But just as the relationship between the older son and his wife becomes interesting, a subplot about the Musee D'Orsay taking possession of some of their mother's pieces takes over the narrative. Really? This is interesting for a few moments, but when we sit in on a committee meeting while various French officials begin to debate whether the family deserves a tax credit against the inheritance tax, I began to tune out. Again.

"Summer Hours" has an interesting germ of an idea buried within the film. But a lot of extraneous detail and dialogue make it almost inaccessible to the audience.

a house, a home, and a family history
2009-06-02 - 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.

Post Mortem Residues and Family
2009-05-31 - 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, May 09