We're in the French countryside and Assayas opens with a shot of children running through the lush green woods outside the home of their grandmother Helene (Edith Scob). It's Helene's 75th birthday and Frederic is here to celebrate along with his brother Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) and sister Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) as well as assorted wives and children. There is some awkwardness over Helene receiving the gift of a complicated phone system but the mood is happy until Edith pulls Frederic aside for a private conversation. She's thinking of the future and wants to apprise her son of the preparations made for disposal of a house filled with valuable paintings and furniture. Helene's late uncle was a painter of some renown, and there is interest from the Musee d'Orsay in the artist's notebooks and possessions.
It is about this point that Summer Hours reveals its true intentions; Assayas has made a film that's tangentially about a family but more about the objects that we use to mark and unsuccessfully arrest the passage of time. Helene's death isn't depicted or experienced in the moment by the other characters. We only learn what's happened when Frederic begins poring over a cemetery map to select the best plot for his mother. What is to be done with the house and art? Frederic, the only sibling who still lives in France, wants to keep the house and collection intact but that doesn't make sense for the other two. Jeremie lives and works in Asia and could use part of the proceeds from selling the house to buy a new one in Peking. Adrienne works out of New York for a Japanese department store, is about to get married, and can't see herself getting much benefit from the house in years to come.
As Summer Hours moves into its second half Assayas pulls away from the family (Jeremie and Adrienne are back to their lives anyway.) and follows the disposition of the art, much of which must be given to the state to avoid taxes and all of which means something completely different to the scholars examining it than it did to the family. By the time Frederic and his wife encounter one of their vases in a museum he has almost come to terms with the sale of his family's history, but not completely. The matching vase has been given to Helene's longtime cook Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan), who has refused to take something more valuable because it wouldn't mean anything to her. The final scene is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Frederic's daughter Sylvie (Alice de Lencquesaing) has been allowed to host a party at the now-emptied country house a few weeks before the sale is final. As she steals away for a moment with her boyfriend there's an acknowledgment that the future she was promised won't occur in this place. Then, thrillingly, she charges headlong into the rest of her life. Assayas understands that Sylvie, not on screen for very long, is in fact the most important character in Summer Hours. In a quiet way the film invites us to stop for a moment and acknowledge that we are on the same journey which Sylvie is just beginning.
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