Summer Hours

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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Brims with life and loveliness even as it meditates on the loss of childhood.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It all comes together as formidably detailed and easy-breathing craftsmanship.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Extraordinary 2008 French drama.

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.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

A keenly observed, typically high-quality family drama of the sort only the French seem capable of making anymore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The magic of Summer Hours is that even in its elusiveness, it gives us something to hang onto.

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.

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Audiences watch Summer Hours and then, a week later, remember it as though they've lived it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Even for a French drama, Summer Hours is so slow as to be practically still.