A meditation on our changing relationship to possessions and family legacies, The Summer Hours deals with subject matter that will move the hardest heart - losing a parent, losing the places of your childhood and letting go of family possessions.
Profound but not pretentious, emotionally moving but not melodramatic, the events in this story are triggered by one person's death -- but the film is life-affirming.
Skillfully written and directed, you quickly come to know and personally relate to the key characters - they are old friends by the end of the movie - and you'll find yourself thinking, "What would I do in this situation?"
What makes this film a masterpiece is the way director Olivier Assayas conveys the flow of life, which, he says, "brings change, and is much stronger, truer and deeper than the melancholy felt by looking to the past."
INTERESTING FACT:
The Summer Hours was commissioned by the Musée D'Orsay to associate cinema with the museum's 20th birthday, and in the film, many family heirlooms wind up in the museum.
Assayas has this to say: "The objects of the family legacy are charged with emotion. They have a friendly presence in the house. But they become static, exposed to everyone in the museum, almost captives. I wanted to talk about how art is born from life and gets embalmed in museums. I like museums but the pieces in them are in a zoo. When they are made, they live, breathe and exist with the world. The museum takes their light away."
SUMMER HOURS Drama
Director Olivier Assayas, 2008, France, 103 min, in French, English subtitles. Rated [G] Suitable for all audiences.
SUNDAY NOV 15, 6:30 (double-feature w/Wonderful World 4:00)
TUESDAY NOV 17, 7:30 (w/ post-film discussion)
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The NKU Cinema Studies Program
Johnson Investment CounselDr. Gisèle Loriot-Raymer, associate professor, NKU Department of World Languages and Literatures, will lead the post-film discussion on Tuesday, Nov 17. read more
"EXTRAORDINARY. Packed to bursting with rich meaning and deep implication ... quietly ravishing ... a masterpiece."
~ A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
"A must see movie, one of the best I've seen this year."
~ Larry Thomas, WVXU Cincinnati Read the review here.
"Great depth and power ... it leaves you deeply moved"
~ Steven Rosen, Cincinnati CityBeat Read the full article below.
The Cast Talks About Their Characters
JULIETTE BINOCHE (Adrienne)
Adrienne is a rebel. She wanted to shake off the past, reinvent herself and get out from under the weight of her family. That's why she went far away, to the other side of the Atlantic. The distance allowed her to refashion herself. She is full of contradictions… Despite her inner turbulence, Adrienne is close to her mother and connected with her brothers but this closeness is why she needs to affirm her difference. The fact that she accomplishes herself more in her work than in her life is part of what sets her apart. It reveals her need to break away.
When I read the script, I liked the idea of exploring family relationships and looking at the question of heritage. What do we inherit? What do we cling to in this final separation? What matters to us: the character we inherit, material things, places we grew up in, family relationships? In the end I had the impression that Adrienne inherits the family's creative heritage (she is a well-known designer). At the same time, her mother's death leaves her in an abyss that isolates her from her brothers.
CHARLES BERLING (Frédéric)
When I first read the script I was working on Caligula for the theater and I was immediately moved: the relationship to heritage, to culture, to barbarism, these people who brush away an entire cultural and artistic history. It is a film about memory, the place of memory from one generation to the next, what we leave to others and the state of France today.
I'm very responsive to paintings and objects, to art. I've often discussed this with my son, because for his generation, it seems logical to sweep away a certain amount of values, to reject them or to rebel against them. Then, Olivier wanted Emile, my son, to play the role of my son in the movie. There was an interesting mirror effect.
JÉRÉMIE RENIER (Jérémie)
My character is the youngest in the family and in a way, he wants to prove he is an adult. He manages a company and has a family. He has responsibilities. As an actor, I am drawn to playing different characters and transforming myself. I try to see how the character could develop. That's how I see the job of acting: as research that also requires putting yourself at risk. Olivier Assayas' film resonated in me. I looked at the question of transmission in a documentary I made about my grandfather. He has died since then. I also wanted to explore an inter-generational theme. SUMMER HOURS is the story of a life with universal implications.
There was a real alchemy in the group while we were shooting. Olivier Assayas is a director who pays special attention to actors. The place actors occupy is what's most important to him. He puts them first, which makes it a pleasure to work with him. He leaves us the freedom to express ourselves and make suggestions. He is always on the lookout and he lets his actors bounce off each other.
Cast
Juliette Binoche . . . Adrienne
Charles Berling . . . Frédéric
Jérémie Renier . . . Jérémie
Edith Scob . . . Hélène
Dominique Reymond . . . Lisa
Valérie Bonneton . . . Angela
Isabelle Sadoyan . . . Eloïse
Kyle Eastwood . . . James
Alice de Lencquesaing . . . Sylvie
Emile Berling . . . Pierre
Jean-Baptiste Malartre . . . Michel Waldemar
Gilles Arbona Maître . . . Lambert
Eric Elmosnino . . . Commissaire de police
François-Marie Banier . . . Président de la Commission
Credits
Written and directed by . . . Olivier Assayas
Produced by . . . Marin & Nathanaël Karmitz, Charles Gillibert
Cinematography . . . Eric Gautier A.F.C.
Editing . . . Luc Barnier
Sound . . . Nicolas Cantin, Olivier Goinard
Sets . . . François-Renaud Labarthe
Costumes . . . Anaïs Romand, Jürgen Doering
Production Director . . . Sylvie Barthet
Assistant Director . . . Matthew Gledhill
Script . . . Clémentine Schaeffer
Casting . . . Antoinette Boulat
SUMMER HOURS by Steven Rosen, Cincinati CityBeat, 11-11-09
Olivier Assayas, one of the foremost contemporary French writer/directors, has woven together in Summer Hours a tapestry of a family drama that has great depth and power, unencumbered by portentous melodrama and stylistic overstatement. The film has such an understated touch that the enormity of its message, about how time unsentimentally turns the present into history, sneaks up on you.
And it leaves you deeply moved, not because it's manipulative (it isn't at all) but because it so clearly rings of truth.
Helene (Edith Scob), the 75-year-old matriarch of a family, lives in the countryside home of a deceased uncle, a painter, whose belongings are everywhere. It is a living shrine. But she knows it can't always stay that way, so at a family gathering she pulls away her son Frederic (Charles Berling), a Parisian university professor, to point out where the valuable objects should go when she dies. And soon she is dead.
Frederic tries to get sister Adrianne (Juliette Binoche), a New York designer, and brother Jeremie (Jeremie Renier), a businessman in China, to agree to preserve the estate. It's not that they're hostile, but their lives are global (a key point of the movie) and that's just not a priority. The film, which features wonderfully naturalistic performances throughout, intelligently watches how all this plays out - including the treatment of Helene's longtime cook/housekeeper.
Gisèle Loriot-Raymeris Associate Professor of French in the department of World Languages and Literatures at Northern Kentucky University. She received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in French Literature, and Master of Arts in English from Appalachian State University. Gisèle loves Caribbean literature and all forms of art including cooking and cinema!
About The Alliance Française The mission of the Alliance Française is to promote the appreciation of the French and francophone cultures, increase the knowledge of the French language, and encourage interactions among French, francophone and American people through language classes, social events and information sharing. The Alliance Française de Cincinnati is an independent chapter of a worldwide organization. The Alliance Française is a non-profit organization, founded in 1883 in Paris, which now has over 1100 chapters in 132 countries. More information: http://www.france-cincinnati.com/af/Menus_AF.htm
About The NKU Cinema Studies Program Even though movies are over a century old, they have become one of the most influential and popular art forms in the world. As the importance of visual information and narrative grows, this minor helps prepare students for life in the digital age. Located in the Department of English, the cinema studies program allows students to develop and broaden their critical understanding of the history, theory, production, reception and analysis of cinema as an international social practice of cultural narrative, commentary and artistic expression. More information: http://cin.nku.edu
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