Summer Hours
The new film by Oliver Assayas, Summer Hours, is a beautiful meditation on life, death, the meaning of objects, globalization, memories and and more.
The film starts off with the summer family gathering of Helene and her three children at her beautiful country home. The grounds are gorgeous and the inside of the house is like a museum. There is valuable pieces of art everywhere. Helene's children are scattered around the world. Her oldest son Frederic (Charles Berling) is the only one who lives close by in Paris. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) lives in New York and Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) lives in China. Both have jobs and lives in these far off lands.
On this particular day Helene is celebrating her 75th birthday. And she is also preparing to take some of her uncle's work to various places in the world in order to show them off to the art world. San Francisco is the first stop.
We then cut to some time later and find out that Helene has passed away. Her children have to deal with their grief but they also have to decide what to do with the house and all of its treasures. Frederic wants to keep the house but Jeremie and Adrienne both want to sell it. The majority rules.
The rest of the film deals with small moments. All of these moments feel very real and these things happen in real life. One of my favorite moments was when Helene's longtime cook/housekeeper Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) comes for a visit (with the house being sold she has to go to live with relatives). She picks flowers and puts them into one of the vases because she knows that an empty vase is nothing.
I have liked many of Assayas's films and this is one of my favorites. The film is beautifully shot by master cinematographer Eric Gautier. All of the acting is very good - they seemed like real people.
By the end of Summer Hours I was teary eyed and feeling nostalgic. The film brought up things in my own life. I highly recommend this film to those of you who love intelligent world cinema.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the film ends with a wonderful song by The Incredible String Band, a group from the 60s that I love.
The film starts off with the summer family gathering of Helene and her three children at her beautiful country home. The grounds are gorgeous and the inside of the house is like a museum. There is valuable pieces of art everywhere. Helene's children are scattered around the world. Her oldest son Frederic (Charles Berling) is the only one who lives close by in Paris. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) lives in New York and Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) lives in China. Both have jobs and lives in these far off lands.
On this particular day Helene is celebrating her 75th birthday. And she is also preparing to take some of her uncle's work to various places in the world in order to show them off to the art world. San Francisco is the first stop.
We then cut to some time later and find out that Helene has passed away. Her children have to deal with their grief but they also have to decide what to do with the house and all of its treasures. Frederic wants to keep the house but Jeremie and Adrienne both want to sell it. The majority rules.
The rest of the film deals with small moments. All of these moments feel very real and these things happen in real life. One of my favorite moments was when Helene's longtime cook/housekeeper Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) comes for a visit (with the house being sold she has to go to live with relatives). She picks flowers and puts them into one of the vases because she knows that an empty vase is nothing.
I have liked many of Assayas's films and this is one of my favorites. The film is beautifully shot by master cinematographer Eric Gautier. All of the acting is very good - they seemed like real people.
By the end of Summer Hours I was teary eyed and feeling nostalgic. The film brought up things in my own life. I highly recommend this film to those of you who love intelligent world cinema.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the film ends with a wonderful song by The Incredible String Band, a group from the 60s that I love.
posted by Film Fanatic | 3:03 PM
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