Olivier Assayas 1. _Summer Hours_

[sept...@millenicom.com]

"He only knows his own little world. It makes his writing
minor. I think his best books were ahead of him."

_Late August, Early September_

Oliver Assayas is in his elements in _The Summer Hours_, an elegiac,
intimate film about tight-knit friends and families and their petty
grievances, about minor artists/failed intellectuals, and above all
about the curatorial business of Culture. A sense of loss, the decay
of traditional values pervades this film as in others of Assayas',
but this is lightly balanced against the longing of youth and the hope
of renewal. It is perhaps his best overall film. It certainly got me
thinking about this minor artist's otherwise underachieving career.

The matriarch (Edith Scob) is dying, and she wants to preserve the
art collection and memory (in that order) of her long-dead painter-
uncle who also happened to be her lover. She rather looks down on
her eldest son (an economist played by Charles Berling) but gets
him to manage the estate. Towards the brittle, emotinoally distant,
U.S.-based designer daughter (Binoche) she is more ambivalent. The
other son (Renier) makes sneakers in China. Fittingly, the mother's
bohemian world is lined with pricey art objects and messy, decadent
secrets (just as in Assayas' _Les Destinees_ or to some extent _Late
August, Early September_), while her offsprings' lives are a steady
parade of mediocrity and diminished ambition. (They all seem to marry
beneath them, to dowdy, dependable spouses.) The house is sold upon
her passing, the art collection is shipped to the Musee d'Orsay (which
commissioned the film), and the children return to their petit
bourgeoise
ways. Perhaps their generation's hyper conservative sensibility is
an act of rebellion against the mother's heavenly-creature self-regard
(although the timid Assayas is never as daring as Brisseau in
_Secret Things_, whose incestuous siblings compare themselves to
Gods and Pharoahs). Family resemblance often skips a generation
though. Berling's dope-smoking, shoplifting daughter, the most
vivacious and interesting creature in the film, is the grandmother's
true heir. The film ends on a grace note where she bids farewell to
her
ancestral home via a youth-only farewell party. For once, Assayas'
soundtrack fits the moods. The film starts with a tasteful
contemporary
guitar-cello suite and ends with pop party music and the organic
energy
of young people just having fun. There is mercifully not a hint of
the forced hipness of near middle-aged actors slumming to techno
soundtracks (which occurs far too often with Assayas). Even Assayas'
detractors in the press seem to agree that everything rings true. It
is a good film.

The film benefits from the loan of genuine art objects from the
museum, lending authenticity to the knowing small talk about
Camille Corot paintings and Art Deco furnitures. The venerable
house servant even risks real flowers in a pricey vase. Assayas
always likes to showcase his insider's knowledge of the business
side of literature, pop music, fine china; the film goes as far as
depicts a boardroom debate -- the only scene where no family
members are present -- where a Musee d'Orsay operative
complains that the "rare" artworks in the film invariably collect
dust in underground storage. It adds to the somber, self-deprecating
mood. Sometimes I can't help feeling Assayas is more comfortable
with dead objects than people.

I am slightly disappointed that the top-billed Binoche has so
little screen time. Her character is strong-willed and somewhat
irascible, similar to her role in the other Musee d'Orsay
commissioned _Flight of the Red Balloon_, where her iridescence
unfortunately and completely overshadows the rest of the film. This
is Charles Berling's story, and he underplays it nicely, muting his
pious, martyred, savior-of-history air in _Les Destinees_ to great
effect. (A little of that goes a long way!) The adults seem to live
in
their own world, making long speeches about their reason for
selling/keeping the house *at* each other, rarely sharing the same
frame. The exceptions prove the rule. The scene where Berling's and
Renier's brothers embrace each other has a jarring, out-of-place
quality
to it. When Berling, distressed by his siblings' decidison to sell,
slips
away to cry, his wife quietly follows and gently lays a hand on his
shoulder. He faces away from the camera, but it is the most
emotional scene in the film. These are the only instances of
the adults connecting with one another, I rewatched _Early
September_ just to see if Assayas was always like this. (He wsn't.)
Thankfully, the younger generation in _Summer Hours_ have no such
inhibition about intimacy.

Renier's sneaker-factory manager story arc gives a needed subtext
about the cost of "civilization" and the education needed to support
the next generation's interest and curiosity about art. (When
the Rodney King riot was still fresh, I spent a year a living in South
Central LA, where a 10 block-squared area around USC was heavily
patrolled. Helicopter hovered at 3 in the morning. It was perfectly
safe. Outside the perimeter burnt-out houses remain deserted,
people with missing fingers wandered around, and it was literally a
free-fire zone. I never forgot the reality lesson.) What Renier's
character doesn't do -- contrary to what the art-house critics
have lazily credited to Assayas -- is to provide a coherent discussion
of globalization. To depict globalization you need to be open-minded,
to have a documentarian's eye. The late Jean Renoir was like that,
as was Louis Malle. Techine's _Changing Times_ (which I just
rewatched) and Benoit Jacquot's _Untouchables_, set in Tangiers
and India, are good examples. Assayas is at best fuzzy-minded on
this subject, taking poetic licenses with foreign lands and cultures,
substituting pre-conceived notions and genre conventions for reality.
Sometimes this approach yields memorable images -- but don't
forget poetry needs a ring of truth to come alive. Unfortunately,
his corporate-intrigue as catfight and pornography metaphor in
_Demonlover_, and the Hong Kong toughs as inscrutible killing
machines conceit in _Boarding Gate_, are mere fan-boys' revenge
fantasy against multinational corporation.

Brisseau's _Secret Things_, which deservedly got more accolades
than _Demonlover_ in France, is far more cogent, drawing a straight
line from the soul of corporate culture to the timelessness of
feudalism. Hal Hartley's flawed _Fay Grim_, which boldy deconstructs
Hartley's most decorated film _Henry Fool_ and recasts his misfit
characters into enemies-of-the-state, has so much more heroic
imagination. That's the real problem with Assayas, in fact. He has
imagination and talents but no stomach for heroism, and his films
inevitably fall short because he never aims high to begin with. For
that reason, he isn't the equal of French filmmakers far less
appreciated
in the U.S. these days. That will be the subject of the next
posts ...