Summer Hours
Three siblings' memories of the past and aspirations for the future collide when confronted with their shared inheritance of an exceptional 19th century art collection and the family's country house in Oliver Assayas' 2008 feature film. Left to negotiate the future of the collection and the country house in which it has been kept, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), a successful New York designer, Frédéric (Charles Berling), an economist and university professor in Paris, and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), a dynamic businessman in China, confront the end of childhood, their shared memories and backgrounds, and unique visions of the future. The film is a complex spin on the traditional pastoral country house film and poses questions about the power of objects and their connection to the sentimental allure of the past in an age of globalization. One of two feature films that developed out of a proposed series of shorts that would have been produced to celebrate the Musée D’Orsay’s twentieth anniversary (the other film, The Flight of the Red Balloon, also starred Binoche). Despite these heady themes and what sounds like a relatively mundane plot, the film remains focused and often riveting due to its great casting and exceptional cinematography. French Language, with subtitles.
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