Hawaii International Film Festival Spring Showcase 2009

Helene gathers her children and grandchildren at her French country estate to celebrate her 75th birthday. Their gift of a tricky-to-use mobile phone, however, seems to symbolize the 21st-century pressures that are closing in on her precious way of life. The growing sense the exquisite Helene - the niece of a famous artist - has of her own mortality leads her to bequeath her most valuable artwork and furniture to her closest family: her eldest son Frederic, daughter Adrienne and brother Jeremie. Gradually, Director Assayas shows how family ties, even in affectionate families, inevitably erode over time. SUMMER HOURS is a bittersweet elegy about love and memory and the ways in which we hold them.