Late August, Early September

Released Feb 10, 1998

1 hr. 51 min.

Drama

List

78%

23 Reviews

Tomatometer

75%

500+ Ratings

Audience Score

Adrien (François Cluzet), a writer who has had only marginal commercial success, discovers that he is dying and tells his friend Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric), with whom he has had a tumultuous relationship. Gabriel tries to attend to his friend while making sense of his complicated romantic life, torn between dependable Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) and volatile Anne (Virginie Ledoyen). Meanwhile, other friends of Adrien struggle to assess their lives and careers in the wake of his revelation.

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Audience Member

Just wonderful, told with the French languor that allows you to see into the characters that is so rare in American film.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/25/23

Full Review

Audience Member

J'aime beaucoup Mathieu Amalric, mais lÃ , franchement ...

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

01/13/23

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Audience Member

Nov 2010 - This is another fantastic work of Assayas. The dialogues and the characters are so real that you just know them personally and the actors help so much. The death is very central but it is never overdramatized. The lapses and chapters are also quite crucial and allow part of the story to take place where there is no narration for it and we don't see it. This of course reminds me of Ozu. From what the name suggests and also the realism of the characters and their relationship, I see a tribute to him. Finally the character of Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) is fantastic. He has the love, doubt, egoism, superficiality of almost any want to be artist that one can imagine.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

Full Review

James B

it started off slow and not very interesting, so the only reason I stuck with it is really that it was directed by olivier assayas. (that's really the only reason I watched it in the first place.) it got better and eventually the characters seemed more interesting. but it never got great or essential or anything. I've been watching a lot of okay-not-bad-but-not-great movies lately. it's really boring trying to write (and read) reviews when every movie leaves such a vague impression. I've reached that point in my netflix subscription (again) where I'm just not that excited about any of the movies in my queue and am still not all that excited after watching them...

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

05/11/09

Full Review

Audience Member

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.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/28/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Assayas, the director, tries to grab at the idea of human beings and their relation to themselves, their existences, and other beings, and he captures it by having a deft and loving touch. The plot follows a group of people that are friends and family to some other of the main characters, and the film observes them as they try to relate to others and find some kind of stablity or livelihood or whatever else they need. The cast is perfect in their roles, never overstepping the material and dragging it down into melodrama and the cliche. The film comes in and out of these peoples lives at different moments within about a year and unlike a film like [i]Rachel Getting Married, [/i]which shares in the observational film making, where the characters beings come out in three or so day. This film shows us snippets of their lives and thus showing how they have moved and what they are trying to do with their lives and who they want to be, not necessarily their relationships and the destructive and mending qualities of those relationships. Also, like Woody Allen (minus the fixed characters) the film is very talented in understanding the relationships of these people and seeing how they evolve and it seems completely real because the cast walks that thin line gracefully and because the script looks at the little things but does not try and make them big but simply shows them for what they are and how they can represent someones life. I really hope this review is not too confusing and wordy (well I know its wordy). But it is a powerful and yet subtle film that deserves studying and a search for purpose because it is so delicately made and makes for amazing cinema. If you can find it, watch it because it is very strong.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

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Olivier Assayas

Director

Mathieu Amalric

Gabriel

Virginie Ledoyen

Anne

François Cluzet

Adrien

Jeanne Balibar

Jenny

Alex Descas

Jeremie

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David Parkinson

Empire Magazine

A disappointingly sterotypical French film.

Rated: 2/5

Mar 3, 2008

Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Assayas's sense of how relationships evolve between people over time is conveyed with a rich and vivid novelistic density.

Mar 3, 2008

Full Review

Derek Elley

Variety

A kaleidoscopic but engrossing study of the shifting sands of friendship among a group of Parisians.

Mar 3, 2008

Full Review

Jas Keimig

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

It's perplexing and distressing to watch. If looking for a chatty Assayas film, I might suggest, instead, Non-Fiction.

Dec 8, 2021

Full Review

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.

Mar 3, 2008

Full Review

Sandra Contreras

TV 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.

Rated: 3.5/4

Mar 3, 2008

Full Review

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Synopsis

Adrien (François Cluzet), a writer who has had only marginal commercial success, discovers that he is dying and tells his friend Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric), with whom he has had a tumultuous relationship. Gabriel tries to attend to his friend while making sense of his complicated romantic life, torn between dependable Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) and volatile Anne (Virginie Ledoyen). Meanwhile, other friends of Adrien struggle to assess their lives and careers in the wake of his revelation.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Executive Producer: Francois Guglielmi
Screenwriter: Olivier Assayas
Distributor: Zeitgeist Films, Vértigo Films S.L., Polygram, UPF (Universal Pictures France) [fr], Artificial Eye
Production Co: SofyGram, Dacia Films, Centre National de la Cinematographie, Canal+, Sofica Sofinergie 5, Cinéa
Genre: Drama
Original Language: French (Canada)
Release Date (Theaters): Feb 10, 1998, Wide
Release Date (DVD): May 27, 2003
Box Office (Gross USA): $68.2K
Sound Mix: Surround, Dolby Digital