Olivier Assayas

Summer Hours

Summer Hours

Universally acclaimed by critics, the multiple award-winning Summer Hours is the great contemporary French filmmaker Olivier Assayas’s most personal film to date. Three siblings, played by Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, and Jérémie Rénier, must decide what to do with the country estate and objects they’ve inherited from their mother. From this simple story, Assayas creates an exquisitely nuanced drama about the material of globalized modern living. Naturalistic and unsentimental, Summer Hours is that rare film that pays respect to family by treating it with honesty.

Film Info

  • France
  • 2008
  • 99 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • French
  • Spine #513

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Olivier Assayas and approved by Assayas and cinematographer Eric Gautier, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video interview with Assayas
  • Making-of documentary featuring interviews with Assayas and actors Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche, and showing the cast and crew on set
  • Inventory, an hour-long documentary by Olivier Gonard, shot partly in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, that examines the film’s approach to art
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Kent Jones

    New cover by Michael Boland

Purchase Options

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Olivier Assayas and approved by Assayas and cinematographer Eric Gautier, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video interview with Assayas
  • Making-of documentary featuring interviews with Assayas and actors Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche, and showing the cast and crew on set
  • Inventory, an hour-long documentary by Olivier Gonard, shot partly in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, that examines the film’s approach to art
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Kent Jones

    New cover by Michael Boland
Summer Hours
Cast
Juliette Binoche
Adrienne
Charles Berling
Frédéric
Jérémie Renier
Jérémie
Edith Scob
Hélène
Kyle Eastwood
James
Dominique Reymond
Lisa
Valérie Bonneton
Angela
Isabelle Sadoyan
Éloise
Alice de Lencquesaing
Sylvie
Emile Berling
Pierre
Eric Elmosnino
Police officer
Credits
Director
Olivier Assayas
Screenplay
Olivier Assayas
Producer
Charles Gillibert
Producer
Marin Karmitz
Producer
Nathanaël Karmitz
Cinematography
Eric Gautier
Editing
Luc Barnier
Executive producer
Claire Dornoy
Casting director
Antoinette Boulat
Set decorator
Sandrine Mauvezin
Sound editor
Nicolas Cantin

Current

Summer Hours: A Time to Live and a Time to Die
Summer Hours: A Time to Live and a Time to Die

In this beautiful portrait of a French family, Olivier Assayas is stoically removed yet lovingly attentive to his characters’ vanities, idiosyn­crasies, and reserves of goodwill.

By Kent Jones

Form and Function: On the Object Lessons of Summer Hours

One Scene

Form and Function: On the Object Lessons of Summer Hours

Separated from the domestic spaces they once inhabited, two glass vases and a mahogany desk settle into a caged museum life in Olivier Assayas’s deeply felt family portrait.

By Christian Kiefer

Juliette’s Freedom
Juliette’s Freedom

One of Juliette Binoche’s closest collaborators explains how the actor placed herself at the heart of artistic creation, maintaining an independence that allowed her to become a true creative partner to some of the world’s greatest filmmakers.

By Olivier Assayas