Review of Summer Hours (2008) by Mark A — 26 May 2010

Lyrical, elegant execution on a theme commissioned by the Orsay Museum of Paris, that historical preservation and remembrance of objects imposes continuity and stability upon society. That in not forgetting from whence we come, we'll know quite well where not to go.

PLOTLINE: A matriarch's quaint provincial home, surrounded by bucolic fields of asters and lavender, hosts another semi-annual visit by her three adult children and grandchildren, such visits being the last remnant binding them all as family. It was once the home of the matriarch's uncle/artist, passed on thirty years ago. As such, this maison is also a museum - that honors the artist/uncle's memory - and the matriarch is its life-long curator.

She recognized the noble purpose of nurturing and preserving him long ago, to the point of taking him as lover against her own husband. Act II opens on the matriarch's burial. The siblings go about selling the house and slowly dispersing its antique heirlooms, mistaking them for no more than items of economic/monetary worth. In the process, they also slowly disperse their own sense of family, the morals/values it preserved, any understanding as to why unrestrained economy is unhealthy, the artist's sole-standing tribute - and a small slice of what France once was.

By Act III, the viewer's fully immersed in their loss. The artist/uncle's writing desk takes only slight glances by Parisian museum-gawkers, while one sibling longingly stares. As does the viewer, who also knew it as object cherished and familial, not merely an exhibit. When the grandchildren and schoolmates use the gutted house as pot-smoking party-venue, the viewer feels it nearly sacrilegious.

Criterion, no extras.

RECOMMENDATION: See it. You'll feel as if you now understand some small part of what's gone wrong with the world.