L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours) on BBC4

Above: screenprint of a review of the film.

Last night I watched the 2008 film L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours) on BBC4. Directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier. The film was expertly constructed, composed of many exquisite scenes, and extremely well acted.

Dealing with themes of memory, loyalty, family, possession, loss, and the meaning of art, the film was able to convey complex ideas through a relatively small number of seemingly-ordinary conversations. There were so many concepts being discussed that the work probably needs to be seen several times. The lighting of the film was exceptional.

It also seemed to me that the film was a metaphor for the decline of French culture - a melancholy home filled with beautiful objects increasingly seen as irrelevant by younger generations.

Out of the three distinctive European cultures France has maintained an impressive degree of cultural integrity, but it is increasingly hard work for individuals to live in that culture and still operate in the wider world. English culture has gone to the other extreme and has become so accessible that its cultural expressions (language, literature, systems of government, economic theories, ideas of justice, societal values etc) have become so widespread and universal that they are no longer recognised as specifically English. In terms of cultural stamina I'm not sure which strategy (assuming they are deliberate strategies) is going to perform better over the longer term.