SUMMER HOURS ****

Seldom, if ever, in cinema have I seen a more touching, more honest or, indeed, more intelligent an account of the relationships between family members than in Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours". The family in question are French bourgeoisie but in their concerns and in the way in which they interact with each other they could be any family anywhere; we know them immediately.

The period covered in the film is just before and not long after the death of the matriarch, (Edith Scob in a wonderful supporting turn), curator, in her own way, of her uncle's estate. He, Paul Berthier, was a famous artist and the house is dripping with expensive works of art, both by Berthier and other artists. The problem for her three adult children, (all beautifully played by Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier), is what to do with them, and the house in which they are kept, after her death.

Here is a picture that works on two distinct levels; on the one hand it's the study of ordinary people who love each other deeply and are caught in a crisis not of their own making and on the other, of the French themselves and their relationship with art in general and Assayas juggles these themes impeccably and not without a degree of humour. There are no real dramas or tragedies and even the suggestion that the mother, Helene, had a sexual relationship with her uncle, is almost shrugged off. There isn't a single frame of this gorgeous film that won't touch you or make you think of your own life experiences. A huge hit on the international art-house circuit it is, I believe, a masterpiece.
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