Fin août, début septembre

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!

This is a pretty stereotypical French film in that involves a lot a not-terribly-interesting, very bourgeois French people talking endlessly about their personal relationships and the meaning of life (I wasn't expecting Hollywood-style gun fights and car crashes, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere). The bland lead is dealing with his failed relationship with his long-time ex-girlfriend and his inability to commit to his present lover (Virginie Ledoyen)as he also comes face-to-face with his unrealized literary ambitions and the imminent death of his older and slightly more successful mentor. The dying mentor, meanwhile, is a published but still obscure author. Although he is middle-aged, he has taken on an unusually precocious fifteen-year-old as a mistress--why? because this a French movie, the country that gave us Eric "Claire's Knee" Rohmer and was the first to publish Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous novel "Lolita"--making borderline pedophilia look vaguely classy seems to be a longstanding French cinematic tradition.

The best reason to watch this movie is for Virginie Ledoyen who is most familiar to American audiences as Leonardo DeCaprio's girlfriend in "The Beach" and for her appearance on the cover of a number of lowbrow men's magazines like "Maxim". She is actually a pretty good actress though and the movie shows some signs of life whenever she is on screen (which is all too infrequently I'm afraid). The only other remarkable things about this movie is the relative dearth of sex scenes (although there is one memorable very one with Ledoyen near the end)and the fact that many of these characters actually seem to have jobs(!)and are not just lounging on the beach or in the countryside as is usually the case in French movies. Other than that this film is very stereotypical. If you like talky French movies in general, you'll probably like it, but if not, I wouldn't bother.

Slow-paced, nuanced portrait of the friends surrounding a dying man. Wonderfully subtle and insightful, with outstanding acting and a marvelous script. Director Assayas' skill behind the camera is evident in every shot, despite lack of variety in locations and little action. Lots of conversation but the best moments come when the camera begins to wander. The kind of film you need to throw yourself into to truly appreciate. Very, very french.

Can actors save an otherwise completely bad movie? The answer is of course "yes". Proof, if needed, is the possibly horrible "Fin août début septembre". The only reasons I went to see it, were the fact that the movie was directed by Assayas (who impressed me with "Irma Vep") and that it starred Virginie Ledoyen (up till now excellent in every movie she ever played in). Yes, she was very nice in "L'eau froide", a not so good movie by... Olivier Assayas. Oops! Yet, with Miss Ledoyen and "Irma Vep" in mind, I went to the theatre... and was quite disappointed. The story is so lame I can't even convince myself of giving you a summary. Then we have the director... Well, I can only think of two things that must have happened. Either Olivier Assayas was constantly absent and gave the camera to his five year old nephew, or he tried to make something resembling a Dogma 95 movie. We'll go for reason number one. The camera spins and spins when there is no reason to spin. When your actors sit on the ground, you don't have to make wild images. Unless of course the cameraman is so busy trying not to fall from the stairs at that moment. Maybe falling wouldn't have been that bad: we wouldn't have had the rest of the movie.

But this is going to startle you: I gave the movie a 6/10. Excuse me? A six? Well yes, a six... because the actors (mainly Virginie... again / of course) are so good that you try not to see what Assayas did to the movie. If you are somebody who can look at actors and enjoy their work, maybe you can have a look at this movie. If not, pretend it's poisoned with plutonium.

(P.S. I wonder if I would have given the movie 6/10 if Virginie Ledoyen hadn't been in it. I guess only a remake can tell me that. But in case Assayas accidently reads this: DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!)

STYLIZED REALISM

A 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