Film of thew Week: Summer Hours

Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours" asks big questions about the future of France's great culture in an increasingly internationalized world. It could've been quite pretentious, like some of Assayas' more trippy, stylized efforts ("Demonlover, "Boarding Gate") turned out to be. But the director quite winningly grounds his issues in a simple, straightforward family drama that rings true at every turn. This is essay cinema made all the more thoughtful by its commitment to observed humanity.
Three adult siblings - academic economist Frederic (Charles Berling), designer Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and athletic shoe company executive Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) - must decide what to do with the family's country home and its small but significant collection of art treasures after the passing of their mother (elegant Edith Scob, the muse of Georges Franju's incomparable series of 1960s psycho thrillers).
Frederic wants to keep the place, which previously belonged to Mom's uncle (and, probably, lover), a noteworthy artist, and the collection iintact for his own and Jeremie's children.
But as his tween daughter says when shown the family's two Corots, "They're nice, but not what I like."
"It's another era," adds Frederic's son, summing up the film's thesis in an offhand nutshell.
Adrienne lives and works in New York and is engaged to an American. Jeremie has just been promoted to a position in Beijing, where high, post- Olympics living costs will keep his growing family in Asia more than ever, even for vacations. Being the only one still in France, Frederic accedes to the others' desires to sell off the estate and its contents. What follows is an emotionally wrought but very civilized examination of just what beautiful objects are worth monetarily, culturally and sentimentally.
Subtly but relentlessly, Assayas' ponders whether France's patrimony is being undermined by globalization and its attendant financial pressures - or just evolving its own distinctive way of coping and enduring. Evidence that the nation's rigorous intellectual heritage is in jeopardy appears everywhere; its representative Frederic seems particularly ill-suited for trying to defend a difficult book he's written on a talk show that, like they are on U.S. TV, is really only about shouty reductionism.
Then again, the kids appear just as devoted, in their own way, to culture and nature as their ancestors. And it was Frederic's own mother who advised him to offload the family treasures once she was no longer around to preserve her beloved uncle's legacy.
Quite marvelously, "Summer Hours'" acknowledges that changing times can often coarsen life, but must be dealt with to preserve whatever can be salvaged, and to create the next generation of thought, expression and memories.