Synopsis
After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.
2008 ‘L'Heure d'été’ Directed by Olivier Assayas
After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.
Juliette Binoche Charles Berling Jérémie Renier Édith Scob Dominique Reymond Valérie Bonneton Isabelle Sadoyan Kyle Eastwood Alice de Lencquesaing Émile Berling Jean-Baptiste Malartre Gilles Arbona Eric Elmosnino Marc Voinchet Sara Martins Christian Lucas Philippe Paimblanc Luc Bricault Arnaud Azoulay Marine Decroix Léna Burger François-Marie Banier Philippe Thiébaut Arnaud Brejon de la Lavergnee Marc Plocki Odile Michel Michel Maket Gérard Landrot Michel Broomhead Show All…
Las horas del verano, 夏日時光, Kesäretket, kesähetket, Лятно време, Tempos de Verão, 夏日时光, Ore d'estate, Yaz Saati, Nyári időszámítás, Ende eines Sommers, Летен час, L'hora d'estiu, Sommarminnen, Pewnego lata, 여름의 조각들, Letní čas, Летнее время, Horas de Verão, Letný čas, Літній час
Summer Hours presents itself as a simple drama about a matriarch who prepares for her death at a family reunion. The film then explores the interpersonal relationships between the siblings as they try to implement the mother's wishes. The film succeeds in this, keeping the tone real and unsentimental.
But the film is about much more than that.
If Certified Copy asked us to reflect on the notion of a 'real' work of art through the lens of art appreciation and enjoyment, Summer Hours raises questions about the personal value of art (what the objects mean to you) and the industry of art.
The mother's possessions happen to consist of important works of art that are worth a lot to…
My parents don't live in a beautiful provincial home in France, nor do they own any expensive artwork or furniture made by globally revered artists, but they are getting rid of the house I grew up in and moving to a new one in a month or two, and this movie made me sad about life and loss and getting older but also happy that my memories aren't inextricably tied to inanimate objects that will have to be sold off or imprisoned in a museum for tax purposes. If my Space Ghost Coast to Coast DVDs turn up missing though, well let's just say there'll be trouble.
my instincts kept screaming about how fragile everything is but along the way i kept learning to trust that everything would be held & cushioned. lots of letting go, lots of holding on. lots of conflict resolved swiftly with love. happy for the vase that escaped & gets to be filled.
"They'll have better things to do than deal with bric-a-brac from another era."
Released in the year following his own mother's death, Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours (L'Heure d'été) is a compassionate yet unwaveringly pragmatic portrait of three adult siblings from a prosperous, far-flung French family that are at once united and estranged by the passing of its matriarch, Hélène (Édith Scob). The widowed Hélène has spent her twilight years maintaining the country estate and private collection of her esteemed uncle, the painter Paul Berthier—for whom she also assumed the roles of muse and (it is implied) lover. Assayas' central dichotomy between the collision of the traditional and the contemporary is the film's simple but elegantly understated engine.
Summer Hours opens with…
My family has always survived on the hinges of what it doesn’t say rather than the secrets they choose to share as one. Words are another currency used to pay your way along. Use them with abandon and you dilute their overall worth. Generational shifts, a transaction that must be made to move on. Memories, yet one more economy designed to trickle down to its heirs to come.
Assayas is a quiet filmmaker, even when he’s loud. Even his most deceptively quiet enfolds an illusory, stealthy stillness that reveals truths in pockets of earned silence to tell all or the slow build of a back-and-forth that sheds its skin as the real motives are peeled back, let come to light.…
I haven’t tagged this with a spoiler alert. If you’re really spoiler sensitive, you might want to pass reading this. If you’re not, Summer Hours isn’t a big plot twist film, its outcome is apparent from the start.
I thoroughly enjoyed Summer Hours, not only for what it was, but for what it wasn’t.
It’s a story of generational succession and the value placed on family possessions. In this case the possessions are valuable pieces of art and furniture collected over a lifetime, and a beautiful country villa that was the family’s long time home. At her 75th birthday celebration, the matriarch of the family spells out to her eldest the significance of each piece, and its value both monetarily…
Tour de France Challenge - 41. Juliette Binoche
As the flowers bloom and the summer sun shines down its life affirming rays of hope, so a family anticipates a changing of the day. A new day in which the ghosts of the past are no more, and another iteration of its family tree fades.
In typical fashion for a director at one with the nuance of generational relationships, director Olivier Assayas breathes life among the gardens of this rural setting. A setting where matriarch Hélène lives among a collection of valuable arte nouveau trinkets collected during a life of love, passion and closely guarded secrets.
Her globally scattered children played by Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier and Juliette Binoche come home…
Included In Lists:
Criterion Collection - #513
Review In A Nutshell:
This is a wonderful film that speaks about the importance of art, and what it means to a person in an intimate level. It is only when art is in our possession and had the opportunity to live with it, that we truly are able to appreciate it and create our own interpretation on it. When going to the museum or gallery to observe art, no matter what form it is, the connection with it is never as deep as the ones who made it or have been in the presence of it during all their lives. This film helped me open my eyes to that and how truly…
It's a warm summer in a village near Paris and a family gets together to celebrate the birthday of Hélène, a woman who has dedicated her life to preserving the legacy of her uncle, the impressionist painter Paul Berthier. The house contains a series of objects that make up an exquisite collection of nineteenth-century art; art nouveau furniture by Majorelle, modernist cabinets by Hoffmann, paintings by Corot and Odilon Redon, but it is also home to countless memories of happy childhoods, secrets and melancholy. When Hélène dies, her children will have to decide the fate of this place and its objects that represent a significant part of the family history. In L'Heure d'été, Olivier Assayas explores the idea of objects…
i love french people and their bourgeois little dramas … thank god they aren’t real 😳