Cover of Summer Hours (The Criterion Collection)
Summer Hours (2009), a film by Olivier Assayas, is gratifyingly intelligent but it bored me a bit both times I saw it. Its fiction about a French family reveals Assayas’s concern with what threatens French culture: namely, global interests and global markets (doubtful) and the ignorance of the young (I agree). Nothing is said about Muslim immigrants, though.
The acting in SH is first-rate. Juliette Binoche is sheer genius with aplomb and emotion and facial activity. From others too—Jeremie Renier (Jeremie), Valerie Bonneton (Angela), and so on—there is anything but conventionality; all offer mesmerizing freshness. The film is quite memorable for one so static.
(In French with English subtitles)
