80
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).
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
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.
40
Assayas' attempt to present a multi-perspective Polaroid view of Adrien and his circle fall back on the tired technique of abruptly punctuating grainy, handheld sequence with jump cuts. A disappointingly sterotypical French film.
70
A kaleidoscopic but engrossing study of the shifting sands of friendship among a group of Parisians, "Late August, Early September" reps a major advance by writer-director Olivier Assayas in warmth and maturity of observation.
75
San Francisco Examiner by G. Allen Johnson
A demanding, rewarding (if overlong) and - yes - a personally felt experience.
70
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
If Assayas doesn't always transport his film's events beyond the all too commonplace, his understatement can also yield moments of quiet simplicity.
75
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]
80
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
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 by Mick LaSalle
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
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.