SUMMER HOURS

Summer Hours is a French film that explores relationships, globalisation and cultural memory through the story of three siblings and their mothers’ house. Like a modern and more intimate Russian Ark, the changing seasons of this family are played out against a backdrop of implied family history that is never quite fully explored. Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jérémie Renier all take an intense and complex approach to their characters, which they all played a role in investing with their own family histories. The opacity of this family’s past and the sense of mystery surrounding it is ultimately what makes this film so evocative and haunting. (Trischelle Roberts)