A family gather round their elderly mother (Edith Scob) in her country house. She is the heiress to her uncle's art collection, which includes paintings by Degas and Corot and other exceptional 19th-century art. When she dies, Frederic (Charles Berling) is reluctantly put in charge of selling both the property and the art. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and Jeremie (Jeremie renier), her other children, readily agree.
Olivier Assayas's film, beautifully played, is an atmospheric and sensitive treatise on loss, heritage and memory. Are the family right to give up both the house and its treasures to raise money? Or should they honour their mother by keeping her treasures and settling their obvious differences? Assayas makes this an almost Chekhovian study, and one that reminds us gently and persuasively of the films of the great renoir.
Summer Hours (L'Heure D'Ete)
Cert: 12A
