L’heure d’été/Summer Hours (2009) | dir. Oliver Assayas | 103 min | France

Summer Hours (2009) was the first of two films I caught at the Seattle International Film Festival back in May. My two companions and I were, by far, the youngest people in the audience, and with good reason. Aging, death, alienation from family, loneliness–these themes run deep through Oliver Assayas’ latest film, a departure from the work he’s become known for (Irma Vep). After matriarch Helene passes away following her 75th birthday, we watch her three children (and their children) struggle over what to do with her estate–a country house just outside Paris, and a plethora of artsy fartsy shit she made and collected over the years. Each of them lead petty bourgeois lives on three different continents, swept by the tide of globalization and no longer identifying with the place (and idea) they used to call home. Frederic (Charles Berling), an economist, lives in Paris while his brother Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) markets sneakers in Hong Kong and sister Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), is a New York designer. It is that story, the economic reality, that intrigues far more than the emotional reactions to Helene’s death. Without it, Summer Hours is simply another movie about old people for other old people. But here, it becomes a statement about something greater–a eulogy for a simpler time unburdened by the marketplace.