Summer Hours

A

Directed by Olivier Assayas

Talented french director Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours" is a wonderful and incredibly perceptive meditation on family, art, and the importance of objects and their relation to memory.

Following the sudden death of their mother, siblings Frederic, an economist living in Paris, Adrienne, an industrial designer living in New York, and Jeremie, a businessman living in China, come together in Paris to decide the fate of their family's summer house and its collection or objets d'art.

"Summer Hours" is a film that lacks big moments, fiery acting, or anything else that really grabs the attention at first glance but it leaves a deep impression nonetheless due to Assayas' deft skill at weaving together an intricate storyline that is filled with wonderful and witty observations. One of the main threads of the film is the erosive effects of globalization on middle and upper middle class families whose sons and daughters often leave the home to pursue their education or careers, never to return. Assayas' film doesn't necessarily pass judgement on these decisions but only observes that they are now the norm and will, inevitably, contribute to making some things, like passing on the family's cottage from one generation to the next, a thing of the past.

"Summer Hours" is also one of the better films about art that I've seen in awhile, insofar has it touches on the lost "art" (pun intended) of collecting objects without interest in financial gain but rather to pass them on, as objects of beauty, to your kin. In "Summer Hours" the children's refusal to hang on to some of their mother's prized collection of art and furniture, although financially shrewd, nonetheless demonstrates their lack of interest in continuing the family heritage or rather their lack of understanding of why these objects mattered to their mother.