Summer Hours

Winding-up an estate rends many families, but three siblings, heirs to a few valuable art objects and a French country house, manage to do so amicably -- well, democratically, anyway.

The New York Times' A.O. Scott wrote:

... Hélène’s [Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob)] eldest son, Frédéric (Charles Berling), wants to keep everything as it is, so that the next generation can gather at the old place and appreciate Grandma’s stuff. But Frédéric’s sister, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), and their younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), who live abroad (she in the United States, he in China with his wife and three children), would rather sell the house and most of what is in it, donating the best of the paintings, pieces of furniture and sundry knickknacks to the Musée d’Orsay.

That, in a nutshell, is the dramatic arc of this extraordinary film, which, in spite of its modest scale, tactful manner and potentially dowdy subject matter, is packed nearly to bursting with rich meaning and deep implication. And this is only fitting, since one of Mr. Assayas’s [Olivier Assayas, the film's Director] themes is the way that inanimate things accrue value, sentimental and otherwise — the curious alchemy that transforms certain objects into art. ...

Late in the film, Frédéric and his wife see his mother's desk and a vase at the Musée d’Orsay and comment that they're nicely displayed, but Frédéric's tone of voice seemed to convey the idea that they were less valuable in their new setting, outside his mother's house, where they had been used in the course of ordinary, everyday life.

In his review, A.O. Scott wrote, "Frédéric ... dreams of holding on to it all for at least one more generation, but the film’s clearest and most poignant insight is that this longing, which is essentially to stop time, can never be fulfilled."

A.O. Scott's review of the film is "Sorting Out an Inheritance: Three Siblings Dissect the Stuff of Life," where this post's photo was found.

My rating of Summer Hours? A must see.