There’s a magic to summer as a child that never quite loses its touch as the years go on. The months of July and August carry a certain timeless aspect that hardly holds up against the chaotic realities of our world, except in memory. You can’t go back to the way things were in your youth, but a return to the familiar, seemingly immortal, settings of your summer adventures can certainly breathe life into the idea that you might.

The French film Summer Hours (original title L’Heure d’été) centers its narrative around the end of a family’s summer magic. Family matriarch Hélène Berthier (Édith Scob) spends the last few years of her life seemingly trying to put her estate in order, a lifetime of devotion to her artist uncle, Paul Berthier. Her oldest son Frédéric (Charles Berling) is mostly entrusted with preserving the estate, split equally with his siblings Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), both of whom now live abroad. The death of Hélène puts her idyllic wishes into jeopardy, as neither Adrienne nor Jérémie wish to keep the house in the family, exacerbated by the heavy estate tax imposed for its impressive collection of art.

Director and screenwriter Olivier Assayas crafts a rich narrative devoid of the typical family squabbling you’d expect when an estate needs to be broken up. There are certain sympathies reserved for the gatekeepers, namely Frédéric and Éloïse (Isabelle Sadoyan), the family’s longtime housekeeper, but the film doesn’t stretch to indict the very reasonable opinions of the siblings who accept the reality that their lives have taken them far away from France. Hélène’s own perspective of her legacy is deliciously murky, her delusions of grandeur toward her uncle surfacing on more than a few occasions.

Berling mostly anchors the narrative on the perpetually put-upon Frédéric, facing fire from three generations of his family. Frédéric is relatable, the through-line from the past to the present, thrust into a family-stabilizing role for lack of any other alternative. Berling does a fantastic job endearing himself to the audience through his abounding grace, eliciting sympathy for his rather privileged family.

Assayas keeps a comfortable rhythm to his pacing, matching the laid-back nature of summer with a slow burn that savors the quieter moments of its conflict. The film looks around for some padding to buff out the third act of its 103-minute runtime, but the narrative hardly drags either. The only true antagonist, beyond the estate tax, is time itself.

There are more than a few moments of genuine beauty hidden in Summer Hours’ quiet narrative. 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. Time only moves in one direction. Summer can feel like forever, until September and all the obligations of the real world come crawling around.

There’s a certain timeless feeling to being young in a world that’s been raped and pillaged to the brink of destruction by the twisted wrought of capitalism. Film often sells its audience on the idea that we can break free of that cycle through a kind of a-ha moment, as if coming of age instills upon us new superpowers to transcend the limitations of our decaying planet. The 1997 film Made in Hong Kong, the first release after the region’s handover from the United Kingdom to China, explores the lives of a few teens living on the outskirts of society, barely scraping by, with no hope for the future.

Autumn Moon (Sam Lee) is a high school dropout working as a debt collector for a local gang run by Fat Chan (Chan Tat-Yee). Autumn is a feisty young kid, with spikey hair that matches his aggressive demeanor, but often displays a softer side as well. Autumn looks after Sylvester (Wenders Li), a mentally disabled kid who is frequently bullied, while being haunted by a love letter left behind by a peer Susan (Amy Tam Ka-Chuen) before she committed suicide. Autumn’s father left his family for a mistress, while his mother (Doris Chow Yan-Wah) abandons him early in the narrative.

The main action of the film centers around Autumn’s budding relationship with Ping (Neiky Yim Hui-Chi), who lives with her mother in a housing complex where Autumn makes his collections. Ping needs a kidney transplant she can’t afford, putting Autumn at odds with his employer, who controls her family’s debts. The memory of Susan ever-present in his thoughts, Autumn challenges Fat Chan’s grip on their community in a mostly futile effort to beat back the unrelenting tides barely letting any of them tread water above the surface level.

Director and screenwriter Fruit Chan crafts a beautifully bleak tragedy that’s bound to resonate with anyone who understands the natural primal rage that surfaces upon a realization that the cards will always be stacked against them. An ultra-low budget indie shot mostly on leftover 35 mm film, the cinematography possesses a natural feel that makes Hong Kong itself into a character within the slow-burn narrative. There’s a certain claustrophobia to the housing complex that perfectly explains the older character’s nihilistic outlook at their inescapable panopticon.

The film primarily uses non-professional actors, most making their feature-length debut. Lee brings such a raw chaotic energy to Autumn that you can’t help but root for him, even if he’s a little over the top for his own good. Chan mostly centers the 108-minute runtime on his characters, a gamble that pays great dividends in the third act. Made in Hong Kong is the kind of film whose emotional impact creeps on you, a subtly moving treatise on teen angst up against insurmountable odds.

The timing of the film’s release with the 1997 handover leads to natural comparisons, but the relatability of Chan’s work extends far beyond the geopolitics. Children are often told to work hard for the promise of upward mobility. The crony capitalism unleashed on the world has far different plans for the proletariat. Autumn lives his life like a kid with no future. He’s not exactly wrong in that regard, but the great power of the film manifests through the innate desire to root for him anyway.