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Summer Hours
Universal acclaim
Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 24 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Family/Kids
Written by: Olivier Assayas
Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 15, 2009
Running Time: 103 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French | English
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier, Charles Berling, and Edith Scob
The divergent paths of three forty-something siblings collide when their mother, heiress to her uncle's exceptional 19th century art collection, dies suddenly. Left to come to terms with themselves and their differences, Adrienne, a successful New York designer, Frederic, an economist and university professor in Paris, and Jeremie, a dynamic businessman in China, confront the end of childhood, their shared memories, background and unique vision of the future. (IFC films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
New York Magazine David Edelstein
Hats off to Olivier Assayas's plain yet hauntingly beautiful Summer Hours, a true--albeit nonsecular--meditation on art and eternal life.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Brims with life and loveliness even as it meditates on the loss of childhood.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
In spite of its modest scale, tactful manner and potentially dowdy subject matter, is packed nearly to bursting with rich meaning and deep implication.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It all comes together as formidably detailed and easy-breathing craftsmanship.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
It is filmmaker Assayas who is the star here. France's most important contemporary director has created a work of almost magisterial calm.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
A keenly observed, typically high-quality family drama of the sort only the French seem capable of making anymore.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
French films traditionally take France and its eternal appeal for granted. Summer Hours is the rare film that worries about that, worries about the future, and that proves to be invaluable.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Summer Hours is a lovely rumination on the meaning of things, but one that remains rooted in its human subjects rather than the inanimate objects that are more easily graspable.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Quietly and keenly observed, Summer Hours nods to Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" (a country estate, a family reunion, an impending sale). Assayas displays a lucid sense of how personal history and family identity are inextricably linked to a physical place - here, to a house that is still busy accumulating its memories.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Writer-director Olivier Assayas crafts a near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork that measures loss in terms practical and evanescent.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
Its final scene is almost overpoweringly tender and beautiful, offering a hopeful rejoinder to all the prior scenes of family members shedding their shared legacy.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Assayas conveys with great understatement an entire constellation of emotions in Summer Hours. I wouldn't have minded a little bit of overstatement.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Much of Summer Hours, which was shot by the excellent Eric Gautier, feels like a Chekhov play and resonates like a Schubert quartet; it’s a work of singular loveliness.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Assayas makes the point that objects of fascination and affection to one generation may be far less so to the next. And he observes the role that people-friendly museums can play in keeping a nation's treasures safe with pleasing subtlety.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
A family ensembler of utter simplicity, Oliver Assayas' Summer Hours is a salutory (and belated) reminder that, as with his earlier "Cold Water" and "Late August, Early September," some of this writer-director's best work comes in modest packages.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The magic of Summer Hours is that even in its elusiveness, it gives us something to hang onto.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Assayas and his cast hit so many perfect notes, you'll swear you've seen these characters and heard these conversations before - not in Chekhov's thematically similar "Cherry Orchard," which was an obvious influence, but in your own life.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The movie unfolds like something out of E.M. Forster, but Assayas isn't all that interested in family dynamics. Instead, he's made a chronicle of how the children will handle the sale of the house and its treasures.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Audiences watch Summer Hours and then, a week later, remember it as though they've lived it.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Summer Hours attracted two of France's acting luminaries, and their presence elevates the material. Charles Berling has the central role; the movie is largely told from his perspective. Juliette Binoche, with blonde hair, has a secondary part.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Each character is decent and likable, as well as complex. The four main portrayals are outstanding -- so natural and believable that you are drawn into their story immediately.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The actors all find the correct notes. It is a French film, and so they are allowed to be adult and intelligent.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Too chatty to be ascetic, Summer Hours is nevertheless almost Ozu-like in its evocation of a parent's death and the dissolving bond between the surviving children. It's also an essay on the nature of sentimental and real value--as well as the need to protect French culture in a homogenizing world.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Dan Kois
Assayas's actors are so fascinating that I wished at times he had given the house less screen time and let his performers explore their characters more freely.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
In the end, Assayas, shooting the film with relaxed, flowing camera movements, gives his love not to beautiful objects but to the disorderly life out of which art is made.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Even for a French drama, Summer Hours is so slow as to be practically still.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
charles s gave it a5:
Anticlimactic story with no real compelling interest.
justin case gave it a1:
Perhaps one of the worst movies I've ever seen - definitely the worst "film" I've ever seen. Let me quote the lowest Metacritic critic, who still gave it a 50, by the way, "Even for a French drama, Summer Hours is so slow as to be practically still." How does any film described in that way deserve a 50? This was an exercise in BORING, BORING, BORING! What a waste of 102 minutes of my life. I really tried to get behind it and don't give me the "you can't appreciate finely crafted cinema" crap. This was just bad, yet six critics on Metacritic gave it 100...a 100...yes, I said 100, six of them! Unbelievable!!! Critics like these are like the people out there who "love" cavier or some kind of stinky cheese - give me a G*d damn break!
emily s gave it a1:
I totally agree with KALTJ. The film was a big yawn. The only people I found who enjoyed it were those who had experienced trouble inheriting wealth. They identified with the situation portrayed. I thought the only interesting aspect was that the State's inheritance laws deprived the family of their inheritance. Vive La France.
Neil A gave it a6:
While this movie is very well done- good acting, interesting cinematography, aesthetically pleasing- it lacks an engaging plot to move the story along. You keep waiting for something to happen to make things a bit more interesting, but this movie is less eventful even than real life.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Excellent film! My only minor complaint was I would have liked to see a little more screen time for Juliette Binoche, but this is minor.
Ken K gave it a10:
Very engaging with a great aftertaste of having a wonderful glimpse into the lives of three generations. Life moves on for each generation.
kaltj gave it a2:
A deeply boring, interminably long exercise in naval gazing which somehow expects to be redeemed to American audiences by being shot in France (ooh, it's pretty!) and in French (ooh, it's foreign!). Overwrought, yawning meditations on globalization aside, you'll forgive me if i can't just bring myself to care about a movie in which the central conflict is whether the lead can bear the incredible emotional toll of selling his mother's armoire. This isn't a film, it's a craigslist post.
