SUMMER HOURS

(L'heure d'été)

SHOWTIMES

Directed by Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate, Clean, and demonlover)

"A near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork...

Assayas creates that rare summer movie -- one that matters.

Lots of films are called haunting, Summer Hours truly is."

- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

With Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas takes a break from the globetrotting of his recent films (Boarding Gate, Clean, and demonlover) and comes home to France with a profound family drama. The three grown children of Hélène have gathered with their families for their annual reunion at Hélène’s rural home. As the party celebrating her 75th birthday ends, Hélène pulls aside Frédéric, her eldest, to talk about what should happen when she dies. As the executor of her artist uncle's estate, Hélène has many valuable objects in the home and expresses her wishes that the collection be either donated to the Musée d'Orsay or sold. Frédéric is shocked and cannot conceive of anything changing in the home. Several months later, after Helene's sudden death, the three siblings gather for her funeral. Frédéric, the only one who still lives in France, hosts his brother Jérémie, a businessman living in China with his wife and children, and his sister Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), a designer living in New York. As they discuss their mother's legacy and the dissection of her possessions, they also mourn the loss of memories. With great delicacy, Assayas captures how Hélène's death is experienced across generations. As the siblings prepare to sell the home, it becomes clear that they are not just mourning the absence of their mother, but also the passing of those occasions that brought the family together.

France, 2008, 103 min., French w/English subtitles

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