Telluride Film Festival presents SUMMER HOURS
Summer Hours/L’heure d’été (France, 2008)
Juliette Binoche … Adrienne
Charles Berling … Frédéric
Jérémie Renier … Jérémie
Edith Scob … Hélѐne
Dominique Reymond … Lisa
Valérie Bonneton … Angela
Isabelle Sadoyan … Éloïse
Kyle Eastwood … James
Written and Directed by Olivier Assayas; Cinematography by Eric Gautier;
Film Editing by Luc Barnier
Running time 100 minutes; Unrated
We hope you enjoy the following interview with Director Olivier Assayas:
Interviewer: There are several important concepts that play out in Summer Hours -– nationalism, navigating the grieving process, art and history, globalization; yet it never feels overly “full” –- there is such a lean quality to the material despite how dense and far-reaching in scope it is. In the film, the main characters are from a fairly well-to-do family, and are in possession of some priceless artifacts of national significance, yet somehow the idea of dividing belongings is so universal -– I had never really seen a film address this properly before (or so realistically). How do you, as a writer-director, speak to all of these topics without the film getting too bogged down in heavy sentiment?
Assayas: I started with an extremely simple canvas, I think. It was really basic because initially it was more like a short story. It was meant to be a short film, initially. The simplicity or the backbone of the story remained because it started with the objects. Art works are born of relationships to the real life of real human beings and once they finish their life cycle, they end up in a zoo, meaning in a museum. I wanted to write a very short story around that and gradually I started creating characters and the characters had their own lives, and they were a family, and they had complex interaction between them. It kind of grew.
I was extremely concerned with using tone, a style, a lightness of touch, which had to do, also, with the fact that I was using this kind of impressionist background. I wanted to have the same kind of lightness because I knew I would be dealing with things that were difficult or complex and eventually painful. I was not immune to the emotions within the film. I had lost my mother a couple of months before we shot the film, so it’s a strange mixture of being extremely concerned with, I suppose, the heavier or the more dramatic aspects of whatever is going on and the constant concern of keeping some kind of lightness.
And I didn’t want to be nostalgic. I did not want to make a film that had anything to do with this notion that things were better before. Deep inside me I have this trust in the future, this trust in the process of life. So whatever I was describing, which is obviously loss, mourning, etcetera, had to always come with the notion that there is a certain fatality and certain logic within the process of life, which also, obviously, has to do with destruction.
Interviewer: I’m very interested in the concepts of “transition” as defined in Summer Hours: “transition” of age, of life and death; “transition” of people and of property and borders. How important is it for your films to reflect this idea of life as being something that is constantly changing, moving and surprising?
Assayas: I suppose at some point it turns into a theme in my films, but initially it is mostly how I experience life. I think my writing, my films, are never too connected from my experience of the world, in terms of my perception of society around me, or my imaginations or whatever, but it has to be tangible, it has to be real…
I think about our awareness of the world, in terms of how we look at it through various media, relationships to information, to images. I feel we live in a world that is more and more fragmented, more and more diverse and in a world which has such complexities in terms of ‘present’ that we end up losing whatever grounds us to our connection to the ‘past’. I’ve seen what felt the most solid, the most structured, in French society, in European society, gradually lose its meaning, and lose its value in favor of an increased sense of the ‘present’.
Our obsession with the ‘present’ has become somehow alienating and I am totally convinced that history, culture and the belief and understanding of history is something that makes people stronger, more aware, and ultimately, to use big words, more politically conscious. We’re losing the political consciousness of the world that is connected to conscience of history.
Interviewer: Most typical American audiences, outside of a few markets, will not have access to a film like Summer Hours on the big screen, and often it feels like there is a kind of hesitance in general from the casual American film-going public to see these films in the theater, no matter how good they are. So, since the American economy is basically in the toilet at this moment, I wonder what the global ramifications of this are on a film like Summer Hours? How does a film like this get picked up and distributed in the States and what are some of the obstacles you’ve encountered in getting the film seen here?
Assayas: I make European films and I feel kind of lucky that they are seen at all in North America, because, you know, most of French and European filmmaking are basically not seen. I’ve been pretty lucky because my films have had some kind of minor distribution in the US, but, of course, you know, just only in the main cities. There is a certain level of awareness, but when you make movies, basically, you hope to address to the broader audience, and ultimately try to deal universal issues, and somehow you have this deep belief that you are making something that’s kind of worthwhile in the sense that if it connects with audiences it will just increase their awareness of the world that they live in…
Movies are open, movies are made to be seen by a lot of people and they try and can mean deep things to those people. Especially in a time of complex turmoil. We live in a complex world where, again, the economy is changing the lives of individuals, in ways those individuals never really asked for. You just try to grab those things and just put them onscreen and then you hope that, because you have faith in the medium, you have faith in cinema, you have a belief that it can be put so some kind of good use (laughs). So you do your best, and you hope it will be seen. -Matt Mazur, PopMatters.com
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