Late August, Early September (1998)

82% of critics liked it
(22 reviews)
63% of users liked it
(768 ratings)

Olivier Assayas directed this French drama, examining several relationships over a year's span, capturing varying textures and shades of feeling between people from late August of one year until early September of the next. Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) separate, despite the… More Olivier Assayas directed this French drama, examining several relationships over a year's span, capturing varying textures and shades of feeling between people from late August of one year until early September of the next. Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) separate, despite the affection that still binds them. A new love develops between Gabriel and young designer Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) as they overcome their fears and uncertainties. At his publishing job, much of Gabriel's emotional energy is spent on his close friend Adrien (Francois Cluzet), a once-promising novelist whose recent writing failed to repeat the critical and commercial success of his early novels. Jenny, who remains friends with Adrien, embarks on a new relationship with Jeremie (Alex Descas). When an old illness reappears, Adrien must come to terms with an early death; he begins an affair with 15-year-old schoolgirl Vera (Mia Hansen-Love). The personal tragedy of Adrien's death impacts on the fabric of friendships, as the individuals in the group reflect on death, life, and the future. Jeanne Balibar's performance won her the "Best Actress" award at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival. Shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 New York Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 51 min.
Directed By: Olivier Assayas
Written By: Olivier Assayas
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Jul 9, 1999 Limited
On DVD: May 27, 2003

Critic Reviews

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Assayas's sense of how relationships evolve between people over time is conveyed with a rich and vivid novelistic density.
Derek Elley, Variety
A kaleidoscopic but engrossing study of the shifting sands of friendship among a group of Parisians.
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine
The cast, including Virginie Ledoyen, François Cluzet, and Mathieu Amalric, is as well coordinated as a fine chamber-music ensemble; their entrances and vanishings and re-entries play like recurring motifs.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
The film doesn't leave the audience with a moral. It just leaves a sense of having been in the stimulating company of passionate people.
Charles Taylor, Salon.com
It is, in many ways, a modest film. But a director who offers glimpses of life that are recognizable in both detail and texture isn't so common that we can afford to overlook what he has achieved here.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
If Assayas doesn't always transport his film's events beyond the all too commonplace, his understatement can also yield moments of quiet simplicity.
, Film4
The individual plot lines fit together seamlessly and the cast is easy on the eye, but this melancholy trawl through the quagmire of modern relationships is not outstanding.
David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
A disappointingly sterotypical French film.
Sandra Contreras, TV Guide's Movie Guide
Assayas avoids easy resolutions, and Ali Farka Toure's score reminds us that each year brings with it a possibility that one will change the cycle.
, Time Out
It's a bit like a Woody Allen film without the kvetching or the wisecracks, but younger and more vital.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
The characters are all properly engaging and interesting, but the story feels the same as many others I've seen.
Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
clever and thoughtful
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Assayas puts a shiny gloss on those who choose to live loose lives...
Paula Nechak, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The cast is full of talented French actors -- Virginie Ledoyen, Francois Cluzet, Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Balibar -- who play people with flaws and fears and who eventually reach a tender understanding.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Reveals the terrible fragility of male friendship and the ways in which it often disappoints those who invest it with burdens it cannot bear.
Chris Darke, Sight and Sound
Denis Lenoir's camera is almost always on the move, shoulder-borne, shuddering or looking for blurred close-up detail to put to use in the film's transitional sequences.
Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City
The results may not be completely original or thought-provoking, but on whole, the movie is refreshingly honest and heartfelt.
Daniel Eagan, Film Journal International
This is a slow, talky movie that seems to drift aimlessly without finding an involving storyline.

Read all 18 critic reviews

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Lanning :

I see the word "sublime" used in reference to this movie. Sublime is not the word I'd choose here. If anything, I'd place this in the anti-sublime camp. If there is any kind of transcendence in this film -- outside of death, it comes at the very end, where Vera,… More
I see the word "sublime" used in reference to this movie. Sublime is not the word I'd choose here. If anything, I'd place this in the anti-sublime camp. If there is any kind of transcendence in this film -- outside of death, it comes at the very end, where Vera, the 16-year-old ex-lover of the 41-year-old Adrien appears to finally find true happiness with a boyfriend in her own age range. <p>To qualify as sublime, I think a work needs to be rising above the mundane, the quotidian, the commonplace. I associate it with some kind of happiness, with joy, with a space positively positioned above the fray of the everyday. Rogers and Astaire dancing above all, every time they dance, is a sublime activity, for instance, elevating them almost into the realm of surreal bliss, both for them and for the audience. Ironically, the only real joy that can be found in this story is the joy of Vera dating a boy her own age -- what might be considered commonplace in any "normal" context. <p> This story reminds me of a pinball machine, with characters, none of them very thrilled with their lives, bouncing off of each other in a kind of random existential dance. In pinball, the downer is game over, the end of the game. Here, again almost ironically, the end of game is signaled by a pure expression of love at the close.