list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Summer Hours on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Summer_Hours/368793/default.aspx Title: Summer Hours
Year: 2009
Director: Olivier Assayas
Plot: Three siblings must come to terms with their mother's mortality as they decide what to do with her valuable belongings in this warm family drama from filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Helene Berthier (Edith Scob) is about to turn 75, and her children are gathering at her home in the country for a party. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) has flown in from New York City, where she lives with her boyfriend James (Kyle Eastwood). Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) has taken a rare break from his globe-trotting business interests to stop by with his wife (Valerie Bonneton). And Frederic (Charles Berling), the only one who lives close enough to visit regularly, has also come with his spouse Lisa (Dominique Reymond). Helene has inherited a large and valuable collection of art from her brother, and with her health beginning to fail, she approaches Frederic and asks that he, Jeremie and Adrienne come up with a plan to deal with the pieces after her death. Frederic wants to keep the collection together and see if they can persuade a gallery to purchase and present them as a set. Jeremie and Adrienne have other ideas, but as he's pondering a business opportunity in China and she's planning on settling in America for good, they don't have as much influence over the final decision as Frederic. L'heure d'ete (aka Summer Hours) was produced in part by the celebrated French art gallery Musee d'Orsay, and was one of a handful of films created to honor the museum in its twentieth anniversary year. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 4
Number of Lists: 1
Number of blog posts: 3
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:24:16 GMTSummer Hours2009Olivier AssayasThree siblings must come to terms with their mother's mortality as they decide what to do with her valuable belongings in this warm family drama from filmmaker <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____80105/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Olivier Assayas</a>. Helene Berthier (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____63996/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Edith Scob</a>) is about to turn 75, and her children are gathering at her home in the country for a party. Adrienne (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P_____6261/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Juliette Binoche</a>) has flown in from New York City, where she lives with her boyfriend James (Kyle Eastwood). Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) has taken a rare break from his globe-trotting business interests to stop by with his wife (Valerie Bonneton). And Frederic (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___195199/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Charles Berling</a>), the only one who lives close enough to visit regularly, has also come with his spouse Lisa (Dominique Reymond). Helene has inherited a large and valuable collection of art from her brother, and with her health beginning to fail, she approaches Frederic and asks that he, Jeremie and Adrienne come up with a plan to deal with the pieces after her death. Frederic wants to keep the collection together and see if they can persuade a gallery to purchase and present them as a set. Jeremie and Adrienne have other ideas, but as he's pondering a business opportunity in China and she's planning on settling in America for good, they don't have as much influence over the final decision as Frederic. L'heure d'ete (aka Summer Hours) was produced in part by the celebrated French art gallery Musee d'Orsay, and was one of a handful of films created to honor the museum in its twentieth anniversary year. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide4Slightly Tagged (1-5)134http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s368793.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Summer_Hours/368793/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/kevynknox/archive/2009/7/27/43278.aspx Post By: KevynKnox
Post To: KevynKnox Blog
Post Date: 7/27/2009 6:24:16 PM
Body: (this review was first published at www.thecinematheque.com on 07/22/09) There is a moment in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours when a father is showing his teenage son a pair of paintings hanging in his mother's country home. To the father's chagrin, the boy reacts by saying they are from another time. This too can be said of Assayas' new film. It is of another time. Away from the maddening present, Summer Hours is of another age, and it could be argued that the film is also of another director than Assayas. At least of what we know of Assayas. Starring the intense triumvirate of Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jérémie Renier, Summer Hours is an almost complete departure of sorts for the director. Usually delving deep in the quite claustrophobic industrial urban techno-thriller of the modern Parisian underground, both of its outcasts and of its artists, he hands us instead a beautifully and elegantly shot, lushly panoramic vista of a family, already disheveled by modern society who must witness the disappearance of their childhood memories, and thus, of their childhood. But what Assayas leaves behind in wanton flush and youthful verve, he gains in a masterly stroke of impressionistic austerity. Not to knock his earlier films - both demonlover and Boarding Gate are intensely erotic films that border on some sort of metaphorical cyberporn wavelength and Irma Vep, the auteur's greatest work, is a luscious ode to cinema in the vein of Truffaut or Rivette - but here Assayas has changed gears from expressionism to impressionism. In this wake he may seem a bit out of place at times, wandering along lazily, without a care in the world, but it works for the most part with a film such as this. His lazy wandering in a film like Boarding Gate for example, ends up much more noticeable and thus much more disastrous. Summer Hours, despite this out of place strangeness, is a gorgeous pictorial on the breakdown of familial connections that borrows heavily from the visual legacy of Monet. In cinematic terms, it is like Rohmer without the burden of a morality lesson. In another cinematic take, Summer Hours can be seen as an updating of Ozu and his gloriously moribund Tokyo Story. Lyrical yet purposefully claustrophobic in many ways (perhaps Assayas hasn't gone that far astray after all) Summer Hours can work as dual tragedy. Both the tragedy of losing the family matriarch, both mother and grandmother, and the tragedy of not being able, or willing, to deal with said death. Just like Ozu, Assayas uses his idea of modern society to show the devaluation of family ties. A time and place where we have no time to live and deal with life. We are too busy avoiding it altogether. If anything, Assayas has created the very antithesis of the family tale - the breakdown of the family done as elegant tragedy. Whatever Summer Hours is - loving tribute, complacent homage, auteuristic off-topic treatise, autobiographical sketch, misplaced wandering - one thing is for sure - it is Olivier Assayas at both his most tender and, despite his past sardonic nature, his most subtly biting. Whatever it is, it is worth whatever time you can put into it.
]]>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:24:16 GMTKevynKnoxKevynKnox Blog7/27/2009 6:24:16 PM(this review was first published at www.thecinematheque.com on 07/22/09) There is a moment in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours when a father is showing his teenage son a pair of paintings hanging in his mother's country home. To the father's chagrin, the boy reacts by saying they are from another time. This too can be said of Assayas' new film. It is of another time. Away from the maddening present, Summer Hours is of another age, and it could be argued that the film is also of another director than Assayas. At least of what we know of Assayas. Starring the intense triumvirate of Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and J&eacute;r&eacute;mie Renier, Summer Hours is an almost complete departure of sorts for the director. Usually delving deep in the quite claustrophobic industrial urban techno-thriller of the modern Parisian underground, both of its outcasts and of its artists, he hands us instead a beautifully and elegantly shot, lushly panoramic vista of a family, already disheveled by modern society who must witness the disappearance of their childhood memories, and thus, of their childhood. But what Assayas leaves behind in wanton flush and youthful verve, he gains in a masterly stroke of impressionistic austerity. Not to knock his earlier films - both demonlover and Boarding Gate are intensely erotic films that border on some sort of metaphorical cyberporn wavelength and Irma Vep, the auteur's greatest work, is a luscious ode to cinema in the vein of Truffaut or Rivette - but here Assayas has changed gears from expressionism to impressionism. In this wake he may seem a bit out of place at times, wandering along lazily, without a care in the world, but it works for the most part with a film such as this. His lazy wandering in a film like Boarding Gate for example, ends up much more noticeable and thus much more disastrous. Summer Hours, despite this out of place strangeness, is a gorgeous pictorial on the breakdown of familial connections that borrows heavily from the visual legacy of Monet. In cinematic terms, it is like Rohmer without the burden of a morality lesson. In another cinematic take, Summer Hours can be seen as an updating of Ozu and his gloriously moribund Tokyo Story. Lyrical yet purposefully claustrophobic in many ways (perhaps Assayas hasn't gone that far astray after all) Summer Hours can work as dual tragedy. Both the tragedy of losing the family matriarch, both mother and grandmother, and the tragedy of not being able, or willing, to deal with said death. Just like Ozu, Assayas uses his idea of modern society to show the devaluation of family ties. A time and place where we have no time to live and deal with life. We are too busy avoiding it altogether. If anything, Assayas has created the very antithesis of the family tale - the breakdown of the family done as elegant tragedy. Whatever Summer Hours is - loving tribute, complacent homage, auteuristic off-topic treatise, autobiographical sketch, misplaced wandering - one thing is for sure - it is Olivier Assayas at both his most tender and, despite his past sardonic nature, his most subtly biting. Whatever it is, it is worth whatever time you can put into it. http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/5/22/29733.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 5/22/2008 8:01:25 AM
Body: Two films, two days, two revered European filmmakers presenting work that, in one way or another, reps a return. Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours screened in the market without the Cannes Film Festival’s official kiss on the cheek, but even without that critical imprimatur, it’s nonetheless one the finest features I’ve seen this year, a return to classicism of a sort for Assayas (in the press notes, he admits that he sought to return to the stylistic concerns and working method of his Late August, Early September era) and the kind of thoughtful French film designed for adults for which there seems to longer be a U.S. market (IFC bought it anyway). Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies’ first film in eight years after the commercially unsuccessful artistic triumph of The House of Mirth, is a plain return to work. Both movies are about memory, about place, and a taking stock of the relationship between the two that happens in mid-life. France, the film tracks a year in the lives of the family attached to the house on that land, as well as their various states of attachment to the objects insiThe title of the Assayas film is less evocative of its milieu than of its driving metaphor and climactic mood. Beginning and ending with two very different parties in and around the same sprawling estate in Ile dede. Tonal changes match the seasons. When we first meet Helene Berthier, her adult children and teenage grandchildren have come from all corners of the globe to celebrate her 75th birthday. Helene is in a maudlin, morbid mood, even though she looks and acts as though she’s in the early September of her years (excuse the totally intended Assayas pun) rather than at the end of her biological calendar. This is why it’s such a shock when, a few months later, Helene suddenly dies. The film shifts into a chilly fall/winter zone as siblings Frederick, Adrienne and Jeremie bicker over what to do with the house and the many museum-worth paintings and antiques inside. That process forces Frederick in particular to confront what it means to assign memories to things, as his siblings, both of whom have long left France and have started new lives in far-flung corners of the world, seek to cavalierly sell or donate most of their mothers things. Ultimately, the once-dire situation lightens. Spring quickly gives way to summer’s sluggish glow as Frederick’s teenage daughter finds at the estate a fleeting moment of muggy, melancholic idyll. Summer Hours was initially motivated by a project sponsored by the Musee d’Orsay, which is one thing the film has in common with  Hou Hsiao-Hsien.’s The Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not the only thing. Both are, in their own ways, contemplations of a French family dealing with the past floating away; in both, both comfort and anxiety come from the fact that past and purpose live on in classic works of French art. And, of course, both films co-star Juliette Binoche. She’s really getting better with age, no? Here, as in Balloon, she’s blonde, and it’s an amazing look for her, mostly because it’s … off. Crazy, wrong. Hot. In Assayas’ film, she’s a little less frazzled than in Hsien’s––playing a famous designer who has essentially renounced her cultural and familiaal heritage in order to enjoy art stardom in the historically oblivious global theme park that is contemporary New York, Binoche almost swaggers. She isn’t given much to do beyond that swagger, beyond standing in for an indifference to the past, but there are few international stars right now who do nothing better. A hop across the Channel and downgrade in aesthetic scale brings us to Of Tme and the City, which works themes similar to those driving Summer Hours, but with a more directly personal bent.  Commissioned by the city of Liverpool in honor of their selection as Europe’s Cultural Capital for 2008, City combines yellowed 16 mm film with crisp, purple-infused HD to demonstrate his hometown’s evolution. Davies sets these images to carefully selected opera swells and vocal melancholy courtesy of Peggy Lee; as the film’s narrator, he sets the tone for the endeavor as a whole by contrasting personal reflections with quotes from James Joyce, TS Eliot, and other cultural giants. Davies’ reflections on the city itself are less illuminating than the personal confessions the city inspires. In the best of the recurring threads, he connects his alternate guilt and pride over his lack of belief in God to the bastardization of religious imagery in modern nightclubs, in mid-century Christmas films. He admits that he fears the wrath of God, but he pronounces it in extreme air quotes––”roth of gawwwd.” “We had hoped for paradise,” Davies laments in consideration of the world around him. “We got the anus mundi.” More than anything, it feels like a city symphony film, an update on The Man With the Movie Camera, After Irony. Davies takes Dziga Vertov as a template, and then takes into account history both personal and social, transmitting both with the dryest of British wit. As far as recent place-based diary film materpieces go, it’s not quite My Winnipeg, but there’s some lovely stuff here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Thu, 22 May 2008 12:01:25 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog5/22/2008 8:01:25 AM Two films, two days, two revered European filmmakers presenting work that, in one way or another, reps a return. Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours screened in the market without the Cannes Film Festival’s official kiss on the cheek, but even without that critical imprimatur, it’s nonetheless one the finest features I’ve seen this year, a return to classicism of a sort for Assayas (in the press notes, he admits that he sought to return to the stylistic concerns and working method of his Late August, Early September era) and the kind of thoughtful French film designed for adults for which there seems to longer be a U.S. market (IFC bought it anyway). Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies’ first film in eight years after the commercially unsuccessful artistic triumph of The House of Mirth, is a plain return to work. Both movies are about memory, about place, and a taking stock of the relationship between the two that happens in mid-life. France, the film tracks a year in the lives of the family attached to the house on that land, as well as their various states of attachment to the objects insiThe title of the Assayas film is less evocative of its milieu than of its driving metaphor and climactic mood. Beginning and ending with two very different parties in and around the same sprawling estate in Ile dede. Tonal changes match the seasons. When we first meet Helene Berthier, her adult children and teenage grandchildren have come from all corners of the globe to celebrate her 75th birthday. Helene is in a maudlin, morbid mood, even though she looks and acts as though she’s in the early September of her years (excuse the totally intended Assayas pun) rather than at the end of her biological calendar. This is why it’s such a shock when, a few months later, Helene suddenly dies. The film shifts into a chilly fall/winter zone as siblings Frederick, Adrienne and Jeremie bicker over what to do with the house and the many museum-worth paintings and antiques inside. That process forces Frederick in particular to confront what it means to assign memories to things, as his siblings, both of whom have long left France and have started new lives in far-flung corners of the world, seek to cavalierly sell or donate most of their mothers things. Ultimately, the once-dire situation lightens. Spring quickly gives way to summer’s sluggish glow as Frederick’s teenage daughter finds at the estate a fleeting moment of muggy, melancholic idyll. Summer Hours was initially motivated by a project sponsored by the Musee d’Orsay, which is one thing the film has in common with  Hou Hsiao-Hsien.’s The Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not the only thing. Both are, in their own ways, contemplations of a French family dealing with the past floating away; in both, both comfort and anxiety come from the fact that past and purpose live on in classic works of French art. And, of course, both films co-star Juliette Binoche. She’s really getting better with age, no? Here, as in Balloon, she’s blonde, and it’s an amazing look for her, mostly because it’s … off. Crazy, wrong. Hot. In Assayas’ film, she’s a little less frazzled than in Hsien’s––playing a famous designer who has essentially renounced her cultural and familiaal heritage in order to enjoy art stardom in the historically oblivious global theme park that is contemporary New York, Binoche almost swaggers. She isn’t given much to do beyond that swagger, beyond standing in for an indifference to the past, but there are few international stars right now who do nothing better. A hop across the Channel and downgrade in aesthetic scale brings us to Of Tme and the City, which works themes similar to those driving Summer Hours, but with a more directly personal bent.  Commissioned by the city of Liverpool in honor of their selection as Europe’s Cultural Capital for 2008, City combines yellowed 16 mm film with crisp, purple-infused HD to demonstrate his hometown’s evolution. Davies sets these images to carefully selected opera swells and vocal melancholy courtesy of Peggy Lee; as the film’s narrator, he sets the tone for the endeavor as a whole by contrasting personal reflections with quotes from James Joyce, TS Eliot, and other cultural giants. Davies’ reflections on the city itself are less illuminating than the personal confessions the city inspires. In the best of the recurring threads, he connects his alternate guilt and pride over his lack of belief in God to the bastardization of religious imagery in modern nightclubs, in mid-century Christmas films. He admits that he fears the wrath of God, but he pronounces it in extreme air quotes––”roth of gawwwd.” “We had hoped for paradise,” Davies laments in consideration of the world around him. “We got the anus mundi.” More than anything, it feels like a city symphony film, an update on The Man With the Movie Camera, After Irony. Davies takes Dziga Vertov as a template, and then takes into account history both personal and social, transmitting both with the dryest of British wit. As far as recent place-based diary film materpieces go, it’s not quite My Winnipeg, but there’s some lovely stuff here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/5/22/29732.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 5/22/2008 8:01:17 AM
Body: Two films, two days, two revered European filmmakers presenting work that, in one way or another, reps a return. Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours screened in the market without the Cannes Film Festival’s official kiss on the cheek, but even without that critical imprimatur, it’s nonetheless one the finest features I’ve seen this year, a return to classicism of a sort for Assayas (in the press notes, he admits that he sought to return to the stylistic concerns and working method of his Late August, Early September era) and the kind of thoughtful French film designed for adults for which there seems to longer be a U.S. market (IFC bought it anyway). Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies’ first film in eight years after the commercially unsuccessful artistic triumph of The House of Mirth, is a plain return to work. Both movies are about memory, about place, and a taking stock of the relationship between the two that happens in mid-life. France, the film tracks a year in the lives of the family attached to the house on that land, as well as their various states of attachment to the objects insiThe title of the Assayas film is less evocative of its milieu than of its driving metaphor and climactic mood. Beginning and ending with two very different parties in and around the same sprawling estate in Ile dede. Tonal changes match the seasons. When we first meet Helene Berthier, her adult children and teenage grandchildren have come from all corners of the globe to celebrate her 75th birthday. Helene is in a maudlin, morbid mood, even though she looks and acts as though she’s in the early September of her years (excuse the totally intended Assayas pun) rather than at the end of her biological calendar. This is why it’s such a shock when, a few months later, Helene suddenly dies. The film shifts into a chilly fall/winter zone as siblings Frederick, Adrienne and Jeremie bicker over what to do with the house and the many museum-worth paintings and antiques inside. That process forces Frederick in particular to confront what it means to assign memories to things, as his siblings, both of whom have long left France and have started new lives in far-flung corners of the world, seek to cavalierly sell or donate most of their mothers things. Ultimately, the once-dire situation lightens. Spring quickly gives way to summer’s sluggish glow as Frederick’s teenage daughter finds at the estate a fleeting moment of muggy, melancholic idyll. Summer Hours was initially motivated by a project sponsored by the Musee d’Orsay, which is one thing the film has in common with  Hou Hsiao-Hsien.’s The Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not the only thing. Both are, in their own ways, contemplations of a French family dealing with the past floating away; in both, both comfort and anxiety come from the fact that past and purpose live on in classic works of French art. And, of course, both films co-star Juliette Binoche. She’s really getting better with age, no? Here, as in Balloon, she’s blonde, and it’s an amazing look for her, mostly because it’s … off. Crazy, wrong. Hot. In Assayas’ film, she’s a little less frazzled than in Hsien’s––playing a famous designer who has essentially renounced her cultural and familiaal heritage in order to enjoy art stardom in the historically oblivious global theme park that is contemporary New York, Binoche almost swaggers. She isn’t given much to do beyond that swagger, beyond standing in for an indifference to the past, but there are few international stars right now who do nothing better. A hop across the Channel and downgrade in aesthetic scale brings us to Of Tme and the City, which works themes similar to those driving Summer Hours, but with a more directly personal bent.  Commissioned by the city of Liverpool in honor of their selection as Europe’s Cultural Capital for 2008, City combines yellowed 16 mm film with crisp, purple-infused HD to demonstrate his hometown’s evolution. Davies sets these images to carefully selected opera swells and vocal melancholy courtesy of Peggy Lee; as the film’s narrator, he sets the tone for the endeavor as a whole by contrasting personal reflections with quotes from James Joyce, TS Eliot, and other cultural giants. Davies’ reflections on the city itself are less illuminating than the personal confessions the city inspires. In the best of the recurring threads, he connects his alternate guilt and pride over his lack of belief in God to the bastardization of religious imagery in modern nightclubs, in mid-century Christmas films. He admits that he fears the wrath of God, but he pronounces it in extreme air quotes––”roth of gawwwd.” “We had hoped for paradise,” Davies laments in consideration of the world around him. “We got the anus mundi.” More than anything, it feels like a city symphony film, an update on The Man With the Movie Camera, After Irony. Davies takes Dziga Vertov as a template, and then takes into account history both personal and social, transmitting both with the dryest of British wit. As far as recent place-based diary film materpieces go, it’s not quite My Winnipeg, but there’s some lovely stuff here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 22 May 2008 12:01:17 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com5/22/2008 8:01:17 AM Two films, two days, two revered European filmmakers presenting work that, in one way or another, reps a return. Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours screened in the market without the Cannes Film Festival’s official kiss on the cheek, but even without that critical imprimatur, it’s nonetheless one the finest features I’ve seen this year, a return to classicism of a sort for Assayas (in the press notes, he admits that he sought to return to the stylistic concerns and working method of his Late August, Early September era) and the kind of thoughtful French film designed for adults for which there seems to longer be a U.S. market (IFC bought it anyway). Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies’ first film in eight years after the commercially unsuccessful artistic triumph of The House of Mirth, is a plain return to work. Both movies are about memory, about place, and a taking stock of the relationship between the two that happens in mid-life. France, the film tracks a year in the lives of the family attached to the house on that land, as well as their various states of attachment to the objects insiThe title of the Assayas film is less evocative of its milieu than of its driving metaphor and climactic mood. Beginning and ending with two very different parties in and around the same sprawling estate in Ile dede. Tonal changes match the seasons. When we first meet Helene Berthier, her adult children and teenage grandchildren have come from all corners of the globe to celebrate her 75th birthday. Helene is in a maudlin, morbid mood, even though she looks and acts as though she’s in the early September of her years (excuse the totally intended Assayas pun) rather than at the end of her biological calendar. This is why it’s such a shock when, a few months later, Helene suddenly dies. The film shifts into a chilly fall/winter zone as siblings Frederick, Adrienne and Jeremie bicker over what to do with the house and the many museum-worth paintings and antiques inside. That process forces Frederick in particular to confront what it means to assign memories to things, as his siblings, both of whom have long left France and have started new lives in far-flung corners of the world, seek to cavalierly sell or donate most of their mothers things. Ultimately, the once-dire situation lightens. Spring quickly gives way to summer’s sluggish glow as Frederick’s teenage daughter finds at the estate a fleeting moment of muggy, melancholic idyll. Summer Hours was initially motivated by a project sponsored by the Musee d’Orsay, which is one thing the film has in common with  Hou Hsiao-Hsien.’s The Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not the only thing. Both are, in their own ways, contemplations of a French family dealing with the past floating away; in both, both comfort and anxiety come from the fact that past and purpose live on in classic works of French art. And, of course, both films co-star Juliette Binoche. She’s really getting better with age, no? Here, as in Balloon, she’s blonde, and it’s an amazing look for her, mostly because it’s … off. Crazy, wrong. Hot. In Assayas’ film, she’s a little less frazzled than in Hsien’s––playing a famous designer who has essentially renounced her cultural and familiaal heritage in order to enjoy art stardom in the historically oblivious global theme park that is contemporary New York, Binoche almost swaggers. She isn’t given much to do beyond that swagger, beyond standing in for an indifference to the past, but there are few international stars right now who do nothing better. A hop across the Channel and downgrade in aesthetic scale brings us to Of Tme and the City, which works themes similar to those driving Summer Hours, but with a more directly personal bent.  Commissioned by the city of Liverpool in honor of their selection as Europe’s Cultural Capital for 2008, City combines yellowed 16 mm film with crisp, purple-infused HD to demonstrate his hometown’s evolution. Davies sets these images to carefully selected opera swells and vocal melancholy courtesy of Peggy Lee; as the film’s narrator, he sets the tone for the endeavor as a whole by contrasting personal reflections with quotes from James Joyce, TS Eliot, and other cultural giants. Davies’ reflections on the city itself are less illuminating than the personal confessions the city inspires. In the best of the recurring threads, he connects his alternate guilt and pride over his lack of belief in God to the bastardization of religious imagery in modern nightclubs, in mid-century Christmas films. He admits that he fears the wrath of God, but he pronounces it in extreme air quotes––”roth of gawwwd.” “We had hoped for paradise,” Davies laments in consideration of the world around him. “We got the anus mundi.” More than anything, it feels like a city symphony film, an update on The Man With the Movie Camera, After Irony. Davies takes Dziga Vertov as a template, and then takes into account history both personal and social, transmitting both with the dryest of British wit. As far as recent place-based diary film materpieces go, it’s not quite My Winnipeg, but there’s some lovely stuff here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/family/MemberTagFilms.aspxfamily
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