Late August, Early September

    Late August, Early September
    1999

    Synopsis

    A book editor juggles relationships with two women while coping with his best friend's terminal illness.

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      Cast

      • Mathieu AmalricGabriel
      • Virginie LedoyenAnne
      • François CluzetAdrien
      • Jeanne BalibarJenny
      • Alex DescasJérémie
      • Arsinée KhanjianLucie
      • Mia Hansen-LøveVéra
      • Nathalie RichardMaryelle
      • Eric ElmosninoThomas
      • Olivier CruveillerAxel

      Recommendations

      • 80

        TV Guide Magazine

        A beautifully realized tale focusing on an ambitious but unfulfilled group of intellectuals, who react in differing ways to the illness that befalls their mentor, a brilliant writer (Francois Cluzet).
      • 80

        Chicago Reader

        What we don’t know about these characters–and what we don’t see in certain scenes–is often as interesting and as important as what we know and see, and Assayas’s sense of how relationships evolve between people over time is conveyed with a rich and vivid novelistic density.
      • 75

        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 -- all of them in the arts or on the fringes of that world, all of them struggling to make something intense and amazing out of their lives.
      • 75

        The A.V. Club

        Late August, Early September is a resolutely minor work, a quiet departure from the brash showiness of Irma Vep, but it's crafted with the sure hand of a major director.
      • 75

        San Francisco Examiner

        A demanding, rewarding (if overlong) and - yes - a personally felt experience.
      • 75

        Boston Globe

        Assayas and his engaged, responsive cast finally beat the odds, subtly and beautifully enabling the film to genuinely seem to be about a handful of friends approaching - not always easily or even gracefully but ultimately very touchingly - the September of their shared and individual lives. [13 Aug 1999, p.D4]
      • 70

        The 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.
      • 70

        Salon

        Assayas' triumph here is in making sense of confusion and emotional drift -- bringing his characters gently forward into life, and making the film feel full and rounded while still resisting easy resolution.

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      • Mara