There’s a piano in my living room that used to belong to my grandfather. More specifically, it belonged to my grandfather’s movie theatre, the Orpheum, on Queen just a few doors west of Bathurst.

My grandparents sold the theatre 30 years ago; the site houses Mac Fab now. I’ve had the piano ever since. The sound board is cracked, and the wood is scratched up here and there, but it’s an heirloom, and I tell its story to anyone who asks.

In a very real way, Olivier Assayas’s marvellous French drama Summer Hours is about that piano. More specifically, it’s about the way physical objects embody our family histories.

The project began as a short film commission by the Musée d’Orsay to explore the hidden histories of its exhibits. It turned into something else along the way, something much deeper and more affecting.

Summer Hours follows three adult siblings as they try to close up their mother’s estate. The eldest, Frédéric (Charles Berling), wants to preserve the family’s beloved rural cottage and whatever works of art are collected within. (Mom, in turn, had acted as the keeper of the estate of her beloved uncle, a famous painter.)

But Frédéric’s sister and brother, Adrienne and Jérémie (Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier), aren’t interested in maintaining any kind of continuity with their past. They’re no longer living in France, having scattered to New York and Beijing, and would just as soon sell everything off and not bother thinking about it again.

As Frédéric tries to find a way to keep everything as it is, Assayas uses his struggle as the springboard for a surprisingly potent commentary on cultural and generational shifts, the diffusion of families due to globalization, and the loss of shared values and histories in the merciless progression of time.

But Summer Hours doesn’t hector. It’s a melancholy, graceful film that accepts all of those things as part of human nature, acknowledging that life only moves forward and reminding us to look backward every once in a while.

And it’ll make you miss the hell out of your grandparents.

normw@nowtoronto.com