In the Pipeline: Summer Hours
Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche and Charles Berling in
Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours
Most of the movies I see in a given year settle into an amorphous middle ground somewhere between “pretty good” and “kinda bad.” A smaller number coalesce around the more extreme fringes of “awful” and “great” while in a good year there is at least one film I have no reservations about loving and it clearly stands above all the others. That film for me so far this year is Olivier Assayas’ lovely and nearly perfect Summer Hours, the early front-runner for my favorite movie of 2009.
After the rawer edged tawdriness of his last three films, the informal trilogy comprised of Demonlover, Clean and Boarding Gate, Assayas’ latest is a surprisingly (though deceptively) simple and sweet affair tinged with a thick streak of melancholy that never stoops to becoming maudlin.
Starring the great Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling (Demonlover) and Dardenne Brothers favorite Jérémie Renier (In Bruges, Atonement, L’Enfant and Lorna’s Silence) as three siblings, it’s a straightforward tale of a family coping with the loss of their mother and possibly the beautiful country home where she raised her family and collected a several generation’s worth of bric-a-brac and memories.
Since the family’s great uncle was a famous artist, the estate includes many pieces of art and furniture and knick-knacks that Paris’ Musée d’Orsay would like to get its hands on. The question for the family becomes whether to keep the house and its contents, sell it off in pieces or donate it to the museum for future generations to enjoy. As is always the case in such situations, each member of the family has conflicting needs and agendas that must be resolved. At the heart of the issue is the sad sense that these siblings are losing not just their mother, but the glue that held them all together and the very things that make them a family.
This is a film that asks whether a house full of memories and objects is still alive when no one is around to appreciate it, but it also ponders whether an object really has any value locked behind glass in a museum where it is removed from the context that made it useful.
In the end, there is an optimistic acceptance that things change as they must. People come and go and sometimes the residue of objects and memories can hold us back as easily as they can ground us. Summer Hours is a beautiful film that strikes a delicate and moving balance between regret over what has been lost and hope for what the future will bring. In other words, it’s about the very nature of life itself.
Summer Hours is currently scheduled to open in New York on May 15 and Los Angeles on May 29. For those of you who live somewhere in between, IFC is the film’s US distributor so keep an eye out for it On Demand. However you find it, just find it. For what it’s worth, it comes with my highest recommendation. I’ll hopefully do a formal review of it before May 15.
Filed under: Upcoming
Tags: Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche, Olivier Assayas, Summer Hours
The way I see it, a film with Juliette Binoche in it must have something worthy about it — otherwise she wouldn’t haven’t done it. This one’s on my list.
If you haven’t already Pierre, then you should check out Flight of the Red Balloon with Ms. Binoche. A little less accessible than Summer Hours, but good.
Coincidentally both films were originally planned as shorts to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Musee d’Orsay but that project was abandoned and the films were turned into separate feature length deals.