Fin août, début septembre (1998)

Director:

Olivier Assayas

Writer:

Olivier Assayas (written by)

Release Date:

10 February 1999 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

A story about the transition from late youth to early maturity, the film follows several friends and...

Plot Keywords:

Lover | Friend | Love | Novelist | Urination

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Mathieu Amalric	...	Gabriel
Virginie Ledoyen	...	Anne
François Cluzet	...	Adrien
Jeanne Balibar	...	Jenny
Alex Descas	...	Jérémie
Arsinée Khanjian	...	Lucie
Mia Hansen-Løve	...	Véra
Nathalie Richard	...	Maryelle
Eric Elmosnino	...	Thomas
Olivier Cruveiller	...	Axel
Jean-Baptiste Malartre	...	Editeur
André Marcon	...	Hattou
Elisabeth Mazev	...	Visiteuse de l'appartement
Olivier Py	...	Visiteur de l'appartement
Jean-Baptiste Montagut	...	Joseph Costa

Also Known As:

Late August, Early September (USA)
Les regrets (France) (working title)

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Finland:K-12 | France:U | Singapore:M18 | Spain:13 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:15

Company:

Dacia Films

Soundtrack:

Goye Kur

Another strong film from Assayas

I still didn't like this as much as "Demonlover" by a long stretch, but I thought it was a bit more well-executed than Irma Vep. The various aspects of Assayas's style are more fully integrated here, but I still find he has a tendency toward extended intellectual coffee shop dialogue (a la Godard) at times that I'm not crazy about, and which still doesn't mesh well with his penchant for moody visuals (in my opinion still is greatest strength). The film reminds me quite a bit of Michael Winterbottom's "Wonderland". Like that film, neither the characters nor the situations of the story are really that remarkable or interesting, but rather the movie derives it's strength from little fleeting moments. And also like Winterbottom, Assayas has an unfortunate tendency here to cut those moments slightly short. I found a number of times wanting scenes to continue longer than they did, building up more of that improvisational sense of intimacy, instead of frequently fading to black while the scene is still underway (similar to Winterbottom's "9 Songs"). Still, there are enough of those moments to make the film more than worthwhile. I definitely think it is Assayas's most approachable, warm film that I've seen. Not that I find he is necessarily a particularly cold or detached filmmaker ("Demonlover", if anything, may very well be a masterpiece of pure detachment and inhumanity, but I think that comes more from the concept of the film rather than the filmmaker, and "Irma Vep" was nothing if not a gushing love letter to his ex-wife, after all), but there seems to be a deliberate attempt in this film to capture something real and immediate, even if Assayas gets side tracked by the unfortunate boats of cerebral, intellectual café chatting.