“By 2008, Olivier Assayas was perhaps best known as a director of fraught, emotionally intense, experimentally structured thrillers such as
Irma Vep (1996),
demonlover (2002), and
Boarding Gate (2007), so the contemplative quiet of the feature he released that year,
Summer Hours, may have come as something of a surprise. Nonetheless, the movie showed Assayas as a fully mature filmmaker, developing his themes from the physicality of the setting as well as the extraordinary performances of his cast. On a fundamental level, the story concerns the three adult Marly siblings, who are faced with the process of breaking up the estate of their uncle, artist Paul Berthier, upon the death of their mother, Hélène (performed by Edith Scob), with whom Berthier had a long, secret affair. Many of the estate’s various objects are also objets d’art. The viewer watches as vases, glassware, and furniture are transformed from their utilitarian, private functions in the home to their more austere but nonetheless public presentation in the Musée d’Orsay. ...”
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