Family Time in the French Countryside

Summer Hours Is a Moving Meditation

BY STEVEN D. GREYDANUS

June 28-July 11, 2009 Issue | Posted 6/19/09 at 7:00 AM

French director Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours opens with a glimpse into a world that has already passed away, though not all the characters realize it yet.

On the luxuriant grounds of a stately old country home in a village not far from Paris, a pack of children and dogs run along well-tended paths under a high pavilion of limbs and leaves. Someone produces a blank sheet of paper with invisible writing in lemon juice, revealing itself to a lighter flame.

When at last the children report back to the house, they are met by a matronly cook or housekeeper, who reproves them over the dinner bell that went unheard and unheeded.

In the background, drinking wine, are the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles — grown siblings and their spouses, with a bright-eyed septuagenarian matriarch presiding over all.

All seems right with this world … but it’s a fleeting echo of an earlier time. The house is alive, but only briefly, recalled from somnolence by a sudden influx of raucous energy and extended familial sodality for a birthday reunion.

All too soon, the hilarious day will be spent, children bundled back into minivans for the drive to the airport or the trek back home, and the house will return to its accustomed twilight, with night approaching.

Hélène (Edith Scob), celebrating her 75th birthday, understands this, and she wants to take the opportunity to prepare for what comes next, including the sale of the estate. But Frédéric (Charles Berling), the eldest of her three children and the only one who still lives in France, doesn’t grasp that the world he knows in and through this house is nearly gone.

His mother seems the picture of health and speaks keenly about traveling to San Francisco for the opening of an exhibition of paintings by her uncle, a noted impressionist named Paul Berthier — the original resident of the house and the collector of the priceless art and furniture that fills it.

Hélène was devoted to Berthier and his work (she has authored a book on him that has just been published in English as well as French), and the film suggests that the artist may have returned his niece’s devotion with more than avuncular affection.

Whatever may come, Frédéric implicitly assumes the continuity of these family reunions for decades to come. The next generation of children already has roots in this house, where he and his siblings grew up; he takes for granted that vacations and other events will continue to bring them all home, passing on to the next generation the golden memories celebrated in that lovely opening scene.

But his younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), has a career that has taken him to China, where labor is cheap and high-end Puma sneakers can be manufactured for less than in Europe. He’ll be there long enough that his family is joining him, so they won’t have the benefit of the house for years to come. And anyway, he needs the money from the estate sale for their new start in China.

Their sister, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), a New York designer, is the most aesthetically appreciative of the siblings of the things her great-uncle collected. Rootless and noncommital, Adrienne is reluctant to take sides against her brothers or cast the deciding vote, but like Jérémie she has few ties to France and doesn’t foresee returning often.

So there it is. Frédéric can hardly believe it when it comes to the point — which always seems to come sooner than expected — but there is no exaggerated drama, no hyped family conflict. The bond of fraternal affection is no defense against the conflicting interests that pull the siblings in opposing directions, but by the same token, gratifyingly, conflicting interests don’t turn the siblings against one another. They’re simply going in different directions.

That blend of familiar closeness and tolerant forbearance that often characterizes healthy adult family relationships rings true here. Hélène smilingly calls one of her birthday presents a “gift for old people,” but adds that she’s only joking. Adrienne needles Jérémie about profiting from sweat shops, while Adrienne’s failed marriage was such a debacle that the very notion of her marrying again provokes incredulous hilarity.

Tellingly, the absence of any one sibling changes the dynamic: Jérémie and Adrienne quietly share concerns about Frédéric when he’s out of the room, while Frédéric and Jérémie have an entirely different relationship when Adrienne isn’t there.

Assayas sympathizes with all his characters in their foibles and human desires, and he allows his viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Bound up in this haunting, moving meditation on a family in transition are implicit questions about globalization and the relationship of art, life and culture, the past and the future.

Jérémie’s children will grow up in an English-language school in China, with no real sense of French identity. Jérémie’s means of providing for his family may be compromised, as Adrienne suggests, but, at the same time, his wife is deeply committed to volunteer work with the Christian community among the poor of Shanghai.

What is art really worth? One of Hélène’s possessions, a valuable Daum vase, winds up in a museum, where it can be seen and appreciated by all. Its twin is taken as a keepsake by the beloved housekeeper Éloïse (Isabelle Sadoyan), who chooses it, not because she especially likes it, but because she thinks it has no real value except as a reminder — ideally with flowers in it — of Hélène.

There is a moment toward the end when Frédéric’s teenage daughter has a momentary insight into what the old family house means to her father. She is there, on the eve of the sale of the estate, with a throng of friends, for whom the house and grounds are simply a great place for a party with loud music and ample liquor. Then, briefly, childhood memories awaken in her a sense of loss.

Then it’s gone, and the film turns its gaze to what is coming next. This is reality. This is what matters now. Or, if not this — since the teen party is a fleeting thing, no more connected to the estate or to the new stories that will soon unfold there than to the story we have just watched — then something else, just as distinct from, and unrelated to, the former things.

The house and its accoutrements were a monument to something real and worth remembering; but every monument is eventually a tomb.

It’s a bittersweet coda, one that savors the sweetness of the memory of past things and knows that it slips through our fingers and is gone. Twilight becomes night, and a new day dawns. A page has turned, and a new story is being written.

Steven D. Greydanus is editor and chief critic at DecentFilms.com.

Content advisory: References to a possible scandalous affair in a character’s past; brief recreational drug use; references to drug use and shoplifting; liberal drinking, including a depiction of a teen party with drinking. Subtitles. Might be okay for mature teens.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Make a Donation now!

Insightful. Informative. Uncompromisingly faithful. The National Catholic Register is more than a newspaper. It’s a cause. Your support for the Register funds important journalism that helps to build a Culture of Life in our nation, and throughout the world. Help us promote the Church’s New Evangelization by donating to the National Catholic Register right now.

Click here to donate