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The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

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.

i like french films, especially french films where everybody thinks they are the bomb, nobody works and everybody lounges around drinking coffee. that's my ideal in life, but enough about me. the story is about a bunch of middle aged people who each is going through some sort of crisis. basically they meet each other and discuss their life, not in a direct way, but through inneundo. are they full of themselves, yes, but it's still fun to watch. not the best of film making, but while we rot on this planet and babes like the one you see on this movie are out of our grasp, we can watch this movie. man this review is lame! fudge IMDb! fudge comments!

Late August, Early September is a movie that will stay with me because it didn't make me obsessed over it right after i saw it. In fact, as time passed, I realized 'gee, the last best time I had with a movie was Fin Aout". So I saw it again, took a deep breathe, and realized it really was a rare, marvelous movie that I feel lucky and nourished to see.I'm suprised that noyone was asking where the music in the movie came from. Well, in case you just saw it and wondered really hard like i did, all the music that was thematiclly featured are by a south African music group called Ali Farka Toure, all the songs are from their album "The Source", and the songs are---(for the opening and the motorbike) "Goye Kur", (for Virginie Ledoyen's threesome scene) "Hawa Dolo", (for Vera's theme, the closing and many parts, the essential theme) "Cinquante Six". I'm utterly moved at seeing Olivier Assayas accomplishment. The lingering, graceful, and intricate portrayal of modern people, throughly, relevantly modern. His water-color painting, which it's moods unexpectedly stay with you after seeing the film. The chosen characters and the bold realities of their conceptions sort of leave me caring about things again. The film showed me processes of natural acceptances and natural complications in life, not mimicking it, just tip toeing through it, yet the character's lives seems to always be existing and experiencing itself in between or before the time frames of the film and so on, so forth. I took that swift, bitter-sweet feeling inside me and kept thinking about the beautiful credits. I kept feeling pleased at how I get to see charcters having been so tormented but keeping so much in, a state that uncannily comforts a lot of my trivial, constant, day to day basis state of mind. Assayas is an auteur, in a really modern sense. He writes his own things, which guarantees his vitality. I have utter faith in him and I'm grateful that his films are made, just there, living.

STYLIZED REALISMA tremendous and moving depiction of friendship and love whose dialogue is obviously French and whose camera-verite is very Dogme 95. Through a hand-held whirl we see stunningly candid and enticingly bare portraits of the goings on and thoughts of a group of friends including all the nuances of relationships. In this regard, Assayas's film is very similar to "La Promesse" and the Dogme 95 films. But the dialogue is extremely French in that it is very dramatic and a little too perfect to be real: dialogues feature characters who engage in dialogue's where they listen and think rather than argue. Yet even this works in the films favor, making you all the more taken in by characters demonstrate such depth. The performances are remarkable and for the most part, the characters brilliantly faceted.The movie is a bit longer than it needs to be, but the subtlety of the scenes requires patient development.If you like Robert Bresson, Hal Hartley, Lars Van Trier, or Thomas Vinterburg, go see this. The style of the camerawork and the lushness of some of the lighting makes this a must see for the screen