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And yet, even those sparse descriptions capture a little of what lies just beneath the surface of the plots: a consideration of the global dynamics that connect our business dealings and - whether we choose to admit it or not - our personal relationships as well. I haven’t yet seen Assayas’ most recent epic production, his five-hour plus miniseries Carlos, about the infamous terrorist known as The Jackal, but what I know of the plot, and the fact alone that 13 different languages are spoken suggests that the theme is explored there as well.

Summer Hours spends a fair portion of its running time - nearly the first 30 minutes - at a family gathering where Assayas throws the audience in, Altman-like, by refusing to spell out in drab dialogue who is related to who and how. They talk instead like a family, more functional than some, a little more distant than others, who only get a chance to be together once, maybe twice, a year. We meet matriarch Helene, celebrating her 75th birthday, her three children - Adrienne, Frederic, and Jeremie - and assorted significant others, grandchildren, and household domestics.

As the film starts, the children are on a treasure hunt, looking for a secret item of significant value. In a way, this foreshadows the discussions the siblings will have as they are forced to reckon with the values of the various artifacts, art objects, and potential museum pieces that adorn their childhood home, and weigh their worth as family items and as a legacy versus what they might fetch on the market. Helene has been the keeper of the memory and legacy of her favorite uncle, an artist of some acclaim. But now in the twilight of her life, with her work achieved to her satisfaction, she is looking to the time when she is no longer here.

In an early scene both brusque and discomfiting she has Frederic accompany her through the house as she rattles off the various items of worth (a plaster cast, some panels, her uncle’s sketchbooks, a final drawing, a pair of paintings) and what she expects him to do with them. Assayas mines the universal unease of any adult child talking with a parent about what will happen he or she is no longer there. But he adds a twist in that it is Frederic who (wrongly) assumes that his mother means for him and his brother and sister to maintain everything as it is, to pass on to their children Helene has no such illusions. In a statement that might serve as the film’s unconventional thesis, she lays out in precise terms exactly how she sees her legacy in perspective of the larger picture: “They’re young. It’s their childhood they love. But when they’re older, they’ll have better things to do than deal with bric-a-brac from another era.” Keep that thought in mind. I will return to it shortly.

Assayas has said that Summer Hours, which began as a short film, a commission for the Musee d’Orsay, is meant to be more about the progress of the objects owned by Helene, from private (home) to public (museum display). Being the creator of the film, he is allowed his opinion, but I tend to disregard such statements from him as much as I do, say, Peter Greenaway’s constant carping about actors being a necessary evil, and wishing he could do away with them entirely. If Assayas’ intent is as stated, he could have made the film significantly more clinical and less human, cast less interesting actors for the audience to (not) follow, and veered off toward a more documentary-like or non-fiction approach. But he didn’t.

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