‘Summer Hours’

French director Olivier Assayas’ luminous “Summer Hours,” a family drama with a larger point, has caught on with audiences nationwide in a major way. The story of what happens between siblings when a significant family house must be disposed of, “Summer Hours’ ” issues turn out to be global as well as personal. While the film is elegiac in the best sense, concerning itself with what the passage of time does to a family, it also takes on broader questions about the disintegration of both a culture and the society that supports it.

-- Kenneth Turan