Summer Hours
2008 (France)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Viewed: June 2, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
A- - The genre of family drama comes prepackaged with certain expectations regarding the rhythm and features of the narrative. The story will periodically spark and flare under the pressures of conflicting personalities, unresolved angst, and outright toxic behavior. There will be tragedies, often several of them, and secrets will emerge from musty closets. Invigorating cinema can be made from such dross—witness Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married from just last year, which did Deliciously Ugly quite well. Rare, however, is the film that discovers drama within a family experience without reference to the genre’s usual, ruthless patterns. Here is such a work: Olivier Assayas’ delicate, dauntless Summer Hours, a marvelous film that will upend the viewer’s expectations time and again. It is not the sort of cinema that offers smug familial warmth, or a free-fall of despair, or awe at the “boldness†of its directorial vision. It is, however, a work of profound beauty, with a meticulous awareness for time, spaces, objects, and emotions. It invites us to spend a year or so with an extended clan of educated, cultured people and witness their wary navigation of life, especially the parts that make the heart ache. Sound dull? Perish the thought.