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Summer Hours (2008)

Summer Hours (2008)

The Very Best

8.0

An affecting family drama that also asks questions about art, home, and mortality

Movie

France, United States of America
French
Comedy, Drama, Family
2008

What it's about

After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.

The take

Summer Hours centers on three siblings tasked with sorting the valuable pieces their mother left behind. Frédéric (Charles Berling), the eldest, has different ideas about inheritance than his overseas siblings. Will their beloved house stay or go? Will the art? The furniture? Can they afford to keep all these for sentimental reasons or would it be wiser to sell them? They go back and forth on these questions, rarely agreeing but always keeping in mind the life these seemingly inanimate objects occupy, as well as the memories they evoke, which are beyond priceless. Summer Hours resists melodrama, opting instead for the simple power of restraint—of unspoken words and charged glances. And the result is a quietly affecting movie that basks in the details to paint a wonderful, overall picture of home and family.

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