Heure d'été, L' (2008)

Director:

Olivier Assayas

Writer:

Olivier Assayas (writer)

Release Date:

5 March 2008 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Two brothers and a sister witness the disappearance of their childhood memories when they must relinquish the family belongings to ensure their deceased mother's succession. |

Plot Keywords:

Birthday | Loss Of Mother | Vase | Art | Telephone

Cast

Juliette Binoche	...	Adrienne
Charles Berling	...	Frédéric
Jérémie Renier	...	Jérémie
Edith Scob	...	Hélène
Dominique Reymond	...	Lisa
Valérie Bonneton	...	Angela
Isabelle Sadoyan	...	Éloïse
Kyle Eastwood	...	James
Alice de Lencquesaing	...	Sylvie
Emile Berling	...	Pierre
Jean-Baptiste Malartre	...	Michel Waldemar
Gilles Arbona	...	Maître Lambert
Eric Elmosnino	...	Le commissaire de police
Marc Voinchet	...	Présentateur radio
Sara Martins	...	Atachée de presse

Also Known As:

Printemps passé (France) (working title)
Souvenirs du Valois (France) (working title)
Summer Hours (International: English title)

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Company:

MK2 Productions

What's the meaning of heritage?

Hélène Berthier, niece of a famous painter, receive her children and grand children for her birthday, and take this opportunity to talk about her death, and what will happen to her uncle's collection. Once dead, Frederic, her elder son think that they'll keep the house as it his, but his brother and sister don't live in France anymore and think that it would more intelligent to sell. When I was expecting the family to be destroyed around this heritage, nothing like that happens, they all accept and the rarity in the 21 century of families having things that could belong to museums takes an end. This film is extremely beautiful, for many reasons. First because it can touch everyone who lost someone and saw what was theirs, being sold and put in many places. Then this film is beautiful because it shows also how everyone accepts that but also suffers from what they can't keep together: family, past, heritage! To me it shows better than any Amelie, or La Vie en Rose what being French means: being thorn between the heritage of a culture and an appeal of modernity, wanting to keep your roots alive and spread toward the world. This is funny how this thought came through my mind "Why do they want to live in Beijing or New York?" suddenly being in the film, that seemed weird to me when I just lived two years and a half in London, and probably won't stay in my old country forever. The actors are great, Edith Scob playing the extremely classy Hélène, and Charles Berling, Jeremy Regnier and Juliette Binoche are very touching and human. It's important to say, that the object are also characters in this story, and it's scary at the end to see them in the museum d'Orsay, how they lost life or are recovering some. It's important to say that this film was a project with the museum, and I think that it is brilliant to make us pay attention to the details of these objects when generally we're not. Question: is art made for museum or to live with it? People wouldn't try to steal them from museum if the answer was museums… If you want to see my other critics: http://www.silverparticules.blogspot.com