CRITIC'S PICK

Though you can almost smell the wisteria blooms, don't let the heavenly French country home and the lovely family gathered for lunch in the garden lull you into thinking that "Summer Hours" offers an escape from life's tougher realities. Rather, writer-director Olivier Assayas' finely wrought film uses the bucolic landscape to sow the first seeds of what will become more of a death-and-taxes discussion. Edith Scob's Hélène, the family matriarch, sets the table nicely, pulling aside her eldest, Frédéric (Charles Berling), to discuss her wishes on the dispensation of the house and its contents after her death. Also starring Juliette Binoche as the sister and Jérémie Renier as the other brother, "Summer Hours" proves a sharply incisive, yet poignant look at how we decide what bits of our past to keep and what to let go of. In this case, it's more than a mother's mementos at issue, it's France itself.



-- Betsy Sharkey

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