Ian Thomas Malone ianthomasmalone.com Sep 12, 2023

The film likely carries greatest appeal for people who can relate to the impermanence of our formative years, but Assayas doesn’t exactly lean on nostalgia to get his point across, always looking toward the future.

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Brian Eggert Deep Focus Review Sep 5, 2023 4/4

Delicately laced with sentiment and realism, few family dramas have the capacity to wrap around and comfort us as much as this one.

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Ellie Lucas From the Front Row Jun 6, 2019 3.5/4

A profound and affecting film that is both inspiring and unforgettable.

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Eve Tushnet Patheos Sep 6, 2018

I love films which capture that atmosphere of late summer, lazy and sultry and shadowed by the coming autumn. So I found this very moving.

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Jay Kuehner Cinema Scope Oct 10, 2017

In crafting his own objet d'art, Assayas has paid careful consideration to the fine aesthetic practiced in Taiwan, particularly that of Hou Hsiao-hsie.

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Eric Hynes Stop Smiling Aug 24, 2017

Avoiding easy conflict and histrionics, Summer Hours instead shows loving siblings, relatives and friends negotiating differences the best that they can.

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Stuart Klawans The Nation Mar 17, 2015

Olivier Assayas's new meditation on French domestic life, the wisely ironic Summer Hours, begins with children's games and ends with adolescent partying and pairing off -- that is, the real business of life

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Frédéric Bonnaud Film Comment Magazine Nov 17, 2013

( ... ) Summer Hours is Assayas's best film set on home turf-the one that best puts things in perspective and loudly proclaims that one must know how to shed dead skin to go on living.

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Kelly Vance East Bay Express Aug 26, 2011

Has the feel, if not the look, of an old man's film, a meditation on the passing of time.

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Philip Martin Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Jun 2, 2010 88/100

...leisurely paced but intensely gripping film - which doesn't lend itself to facile capsulization - follows three generations of a French family as they prepare for the imminent death of their matriarch

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James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk May 14, 2010 3.5/4

manages a sense of genuine poignancy that never becomes sticky or sentimental

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Jeffrey Overstreet JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) May 11, 2010 9/10

The film resonates with emotions as authentic as the details. ... And it asks us to ponder what makes the objects in our lives meaningful.

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Christopher Long Movie Metropolis May 1, 2010 8/10

The film and its characters are smart, sincere and fully alive in ways we rarely have the opportunity to see.

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Sean Axmaker Seanax.com Apr 26, 2010

... an impressionist work with a wise understanding of human nature and a bittersweet portrait of a family going separate ways...

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Matthew Turner ViewLondon Jan 14, 2010 0/5

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Jeffrey Chen Window to the Movies Jan 12, 2010 8/10

The [movie's] concern might feel a little old-fashioned ... but in this film it's reasonably, solemnly, and levelheadedly expressed.

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Dec 22, 2009 A

A subtle, flawlessly acted, keenly observed family drama and poignant meditation on memory, identity, and history in the age of postmodernism and globalization.

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Robert Roten Laramie Movie Scope Dec 21, 2009 B

A well-constructed film about the end of a life and uncertainty about the future.

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Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid Dec 17, 2009

Surprisingly wonderful, as if Assayas finally found a space in which to stretch out.

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William Goss Orlando Weekly Dec 17, 2009

The sheer banality of the proceedings -- appraisals! attorneys! -- threatens to rob those few poignant moments of their own dramatic value.

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