Oh those long summer days in the country, sat around a big table having lunch with your family. Your successful businessman brother, your designer sister, and inside all of the delightful antiques the family have gathered, including valuable paintings by your late uncle who was a world renowned artist. Do you remember those days? I don't, and I'm sure that most of the world don't. But Oliver Assayas decided to conjure this group of incredibly privileged young professionals through which he can act out this sensitive, detailed and intelligent examination of the postmodern family and the way it metamorphoses: developing different objects of significance, different centres of gravity and a myriad of seminal events whose repercussions are rarely fully absorbed at the time. The plot that loosely ties together what is primarily a film about people coping with life is that this is the last summer the family spends with their mother in this country house as she is soon to pass away. The siblings, gradually drifting apart as they pursue their various family and career goals, are then forced to assess and deal with all of the possessions, memories and habits associated with their departed mother and her remaining domicile.

It's a difficult film to get into, largely because it is so centred on this upper middle class, and to some extent a little archaic, familial setting. The antiques on show are certainly interesting, gathered as they are from the Musee D'Orsay and private collectors around France, and the career paths of the forty-something siblings are clearly carefully picked to exhibit various aspects of postmodern life, but it took me a good few minutes to accustom myself to this world and begin to settle in to the task of absorbing the rich tapestry of emotions and ideas being woven on the screen in front of me. This absorption was aided by some high quality acting and a subtle script, which meant that the dialogue, even when discussing matters usually alien to me, felt natural and comfortably led me through the nuances of the family dilemma as it unfolded.

The slow and steady process of absorption into the tapestry of daily life is well worth it, though, once the ideas begin to sink in. Summer Hours is one of those slow burners whose thoughtfulness and attention to detail begins to pay off from the moment we enter the final scene and see the children of one of the siblings start making their own history and mythos, with the promise of their own family, their own significations and their own memories being built. At this point I began to realise just how sensitive and brilliant the narrative was, it became not simply a line on which events unfold but a metaphor for time itself. The constant changes, the shifts of routine, the coming and going of people and the multitude of places and items to which we attach importance all appear and disappear, ultimately consigned to memory - our own internalised museums. The best thing is that this pay off lasts for days, and is immensely satisfying. An arthouse film that will pay dividends if you give it the attention it deserves.