Summer Hours (L'heure d'été) (2009)

In 1996 I loved a movie by the French director Olivier Assayas called Irma Vep. It starred Jean-Pierre Léaud, who played Antoine Doinel in several Truffaut movies in the '60s, and Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love (2000) and Jet Li's Hero (2002)). One of the things I liked about it was that it was non-linear: jumping from the story at hand, about a director (Léaud) remaking a silent movie called "Les Vampires" and casting Cheung (playing herself) as the lead, Irma Vep (an anagram of vampire), to the silent movie, to the new movie. Before today I had seen two others directed by Assayas (both of which were nominated for the Golden Palm Award at Cannes): Demonlover (2002), which had an ugly plot about corporate espionage, and Clean (2004), about a woman in recovery, which deservedly won Best Actress for Cheung at Cannes and also starred Nick Nolte, plus the very good Paris Je T'aime (2006), in which Assayas directed a segment. But I had forgotten until the opening credits that Summer Hours was an Assayas joint.

Completely different--no special effects nor stunts nor dream sequences--this was a family drama about three adult children of a wealthy widow who lives in a grand country house outside Paris, with a fabulous collection of art and furniture. There was a pretty good crowd at the neighborhood "art house" on a Saturday afternoon, and most seemed to enjoy it. Not many laughs, although there was a big one towards the end with a line spoken by Éloïse, the housekeeper, but the movie was sweet, and the country house location breathtaking. We should all be so lucky to spend our summer hours there. The three children were played by Juliette Binoche (Supporting Actress Oscar for The English Patient (1996), also noteworthy in Chocolat (2000), Bee Season (2005), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)), Charles Berling (Demonlover and lots of other work in France), and Jérémie Renier (one of the thugs in the hilarious In Bruges (2008), and he starred in an excellent drama called The Child (L'enfant) (2005), which won the Golden Palm), and the mother by Edith Scob (new to me, but plenty of credits); they were all very good at treading lightly among the potential minefield that even a fully functional family can be. Recommended.