Summer hours wasted

“£12.50, £12.50” My brain logs another complaint, “£12.50” but this time adding “you should have gone to see WALL-E instead”. This slight schizophrenic discussion was all happening on the my bus journey home after watching L' Heure d'été (Summer Hours) at one of London’s over priced art house cinemas. On paper the film looked ok as the assembled cast included Juilette Binoche (possible one of modern cinema’s greatest actresses) and Jérémie Renier (who I thought was outstanding in L’enfant). Also, the director, Olivier Assayas whose prolific genre crossing output has given him more than just an air of respectability, at least in his native country France. Yet the old book and cover cliché couldn’t apply more sweetly than here.
The film is very much a middle class film dealing with middle class issues populated by characters with middle of the road traits. It’s driven along by the decision that is to be made by three middle aged-some-things about what to do with the inheritance left by their recently deceased mother (who we meet at the beginning of the film during a birthday party in her honour. She is shown to be to be getting on a bit by proclaiming the gift of a telephone “too complicated”). Anyway, as the plot unfolds I felt the opposite of what a good film should do; instead of being drawn in I felt less and less a participant. For me this was evidenced towards the end of the film during a dinner scene between two principle cast members who share a joke. The camera lingered over the two of them laughing vigorously and I felt the director was trying to make a point about the devolvement of this couple and the devolvement of the story but what I actually felt was a complete lack of connection with these people. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if they kept the family heirlooms, I didn’t care if that vase is actually worth something and I certainly didn’t care about an unfunny joke! Maybe it was the intention of director Assayas as it has been rumoured that this could be the first in a series. Will this film take on a different form when viewed as a whole alongside the others? You know what? I don’t care. It would take something (to quote Dr. Raymond Stantz) of biblical proportions to retrospectively save this film.
Ultimately the film suffers from what Walter Murch might call a chimpanzee film trying to be a human film. This isn’t implying that it is a silly film trying to be too clever, what I mean (and Murch) is that it doesn’t know what it is. The end result is something of a family drama with little tension, comedy and, most importantly, no sense of empathy for any of the characters.
The film’s only saving graces are it’s eloquent cinematography photographed by Eric Gautier, giving the images a richness that the characters seem unable to match. And one scene where Binoche slowly and subtle demonstrates her sadness for the lose of her mother. But I’ll let you decide whether I thought this was worth the price of admission.

Ben New