Starring: Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier, Edith Scob, Dominique Reymond, Valérie Bonneton

For those that have had elderly relatives who spend every family gathering detailing the intricate details of their will (and I certainly have) the opening scenes of Summer Hours will be all too familiar: matriarch  Hélène (Edith Scob) is guardian to her artist uncle's significant legacy of Art Nouveau furniture, rare ceramics and glass pieces, sketch books and memory but she is keen that the family is fully briefed on what should happen to everything when she dies. And like any adult children Adrienne (Juliet Binoche), Frédéric (Charles Berling) and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) really don't want to hear about it... Although they have always thought it would be nice to share this painting with their children, or to keep that teapot from their childhood memories or turn the art shrine family house into a summer holiday home, or to sell that art fortune and use the money for something else. It's all fine and dandy to privately ponder the inheritance whilst their mother is still alive and making enough catty comments at family parties to make a little selfish materialism seem like fair game really. But it is only when Hélène passes away that each sibling realises how different - and conflicting - all their thoughts and dreams really are.

 

Summer Hours is a wonderfully subtle observation on family, the emotional and financial values of things and the way in which we keep memories alive in some eccentric ways. Edith Scob is wonderfully brittle giving us an Hélène who is likable and intelligent but who visibly drives her children to total distraction in her obsessive curating of memory and her morbid enthusiasm to discuss what should happen to everything she owns. Hers are pragmatic wishes designed to take account of her children's geographic dispersal and very different plans and ambitions and they belie a love and knowledge of her children than the family gatherings and displeasement with birthday gifts could ever hint at. Although her housekeeper Eloise (a scene stealing Isabelle Sadoyan has a pretty good idea about Hélène's lonely awareness that her children are not, of course, just going to keep everything as it has always been.

 

Charles Berling brings a real sense of loss, of responsibility and of conflict as oldest son Frédéric who must do all the work to manage the paperwork for the legacy but has by far the least realistic view of how the inheritance can be dealt with. His academic life is in France, near the family house and radically unlike his globe trotting brother and sister. His mixture of stoic acceptance and crumbling emotions is played beautifully and given greater depth by superb support from Dominique Raymond (as wife Lisa) and Alice de Lencquesaing as willful daughter Sylvie. Juliet Binoche lends a real family resemblance through her echos of Hélène's nervous energy as chain smoking designer Adrienne. She is, unfortunately, also saddled with the one outrageously poorly conceived scene in the movie: a small English language cafe scene between Adrienne and boyfriend James, played with all the passion of a sideboard by Kyle Eastwood. And yes that surname is familiar - he's the jazz musician son of Clint but he hasn't inherited the acting gene if this cameo turn is anything to go by. Completing the family is Jérémie Renier as international business man Jérémie into whom he injects real warmth and humanity alongside Valérie Bonneton as wife Angela. The couple's honesty and openness about their hopes and plans is both deliciously fair and totally selfish saying much about the relationships between younger and older siblings in the process.

 

In Summer Hours Olivier Assayas has crafted a subtle, moving and marvellously underplayed piece of work. We are treated to the unpleasantness of dealing with real life in a tremendously civil, recognisable and middle class way which is arguably underrepresented at a time when overplotted, faux grit or soap opera emotionalism seem to dominate. And although that quiet every day quality in France, this is nonetheless a very welcome and enjoyable addition to that French tradition of warm low-key family films centering round gentle conflict. The film even boasts a little antique porn: if you like Art Nouveau furniture you'll be delighted by the film's casual scattering of pieces borrowed specially from the Musée d'Orsay's collections.

  

Reviewed by Nicola Osborne.

 

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Summer Hours (L’Heure d’été) has it's UK Premier at EIFF 2008 showing in the  Directors Showcase  strand on: Thursday 19th June 2008 at 18:00 in Cineworld 3 and on Saturday 28th June 2008 at 13:15 in Cameo 1.Tickets are £8.00 full price / £6.40 for concessions and can be booked through the EIFF website or by calling the festival box office: 0131 623 8030

 

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