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...near-record number comes as Harvard lays the groundwork for a long-delayed capital campaign that was derailed by administrative turmoil surrounding the resignation of former University President Lawrence H. Summers and the subsequent interim leadership of Derek...
...These two moods, the fraternity and the conflict, are rendered with that nearly vanished quality of France's classic bourgeois films: tact. Much of the pleasure an attentive viewer gets from Summer Hours - especially in the first 25 minutes, as Hélene hosts the family on one last bucolic weekend - is luxuriating in the milk bath of the film's good taste. I mean not just the lovely home with its period armoires and vases, but the full banquet of visual and aural felicities: the pretty grandchildren, the easy eloquence of the conversation, the Saint-Saens symphony of duck...
...this privileged clan. But Assayas, best known for the films (Irma Vep and Clean) he made with his once-wife Maggie Cheung, has more on his mind than duplicating House & Garden spread on screen. For at the center of the movie's first act he place the imposing Hélene...
...property and belongings but declines to spell it out in her will. Scob, who nearly a half-century ago was the muse of the remarkable director George Franju (Eyes Without a Face, Thérese Desqueyroux, Judex), has an ingrained insight into the character that not only presents Hélene in her 70s but suggests the kind of mother she must have been. There's also a taut sensuality that hints at a family secret not revealed until after she dies...
...movie naturally sags a bit at Hélwne's death. So does the moviegoer, as Summer Hours is obliged to follow the dispute and disposition of the estate. (Berling, solid and subtle, becomes the focus of the film; Binoche and Renier appear only briefly.) I think Assayas wants Hélene's loss to be felt through the rest of the picture. Her shadow, and that of her home, have to linger till the end, when Frédéric's own children spend a last weekend at the chateau, and one of them connects with its gentle...