( ... ) Summer Hours is Assayas's best film set on home turf-the one that best puts things in perspective and loudly proclaims that one must know how to shed dead skin to go on living.

| Nov 17, 2013

Assayas' script is more allusive than demonstrative, with a distinct whiff of Eric Rohmer in its conversational blocks separated by fadeouts.

| Dec 16, 2009

n Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas's gently provocative rumination on family and possessions, a trio of siblings wrestles with the problem of what to do with the old homestead once Mother is gone.

| Aug 23, 2009

Evocative look at a family trying to decide what to do with its treasures.

Full Review | Jun 19, 2009

Where a Hollywood film of a family feuding over a fabulous estate would surely end with a slapped face and an infantry charge of lawyers, Assayas's work concludes with a smile and a shrug. Life goes on. What else can it do?

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 19, 2009

Performances in this small and profoundly eloquent film are superb, yet none redirects attention from Assayas's earnest meditation on the ravaging effects of a shrinking world on family traditions and entrenched personal relationships.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 19, 2009

Bound up in this haunting, moving meditation on a family in transition are implicit questions about globalization and the relationship of art, life and culture, the past and the future.

| Original Score: A | Jun 19, 2009

This is a movie that, for all its once-over-lightliness, stays with one. Given what it's about, and the intelligence of its makers, how could it not?

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 11, 2009

Summer Hours begins with an energetic treasure hunt. It ends reminding us how our lives are spent learning and unlearning what is to be treasured.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 29, 2009

You won't find filmmaking more assured, commanding and evocative than that of Summer Hours in its opening scenes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2009

A sweet pearl of a French film, Summer Hours may work as a perfect antidote for those seeking refuge from the summer blockbuster season.

| Original Score: A | May 22, 2009

The texture and flow of Summer Hours, the supple quality of the acting, the fluid camerawork isolating this or that observer while life flows on and domestic crises ebb and flow -- it all comes together as formidably detailed and easy-breathing cra

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 22, 2009

If this enjoyable film is substantially more satisfying than those predecessors, it's also far less daring, a straightforward extended-family drama in the mode of last year's (more engrossing) art-house highlight A Christmas Tale.

| May 22, 2009

Quietly and keenly observed.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 22, 2009

Berling, Binoche and Renier all play off each other effortlessly, and Summer Hours makes you feel comfortable spending time with their family, too.

Full Review | May 21, 2009

One realizes the real dramatic conflict is between the past, which must be honored, and the present, which must be lived.

| May 21, 2009

The actors all find the correct notes. It is a French film, and so they are allowed to be adult and intelligent.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 21, 2009

It's a quiet but heartfelt film that has a lot to say about the allure of the past and the inevitability of change.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 21, 2009

There is an exquisite, almost longing ebullience to Summer Hours that lasted long after I left the movie theater, many of its themes whipping through my head like a whirlwind.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 18, 2009

In the end, Assayas, shooting the film with relaxed, flowing camera movements, gives his love not to beautiful objects but to the disorderly life out of which art is made.

| May 18, 2009