Director: Oliver Assayas
"I'm really concerned with ethics as opposed to morals. I believe that everyone has some kind of responsibility in the way they live, in the choices they make...but I don't think they have to account for it. I don't feel I have any right to judge anybody's decisions but I think everybody's decisions make complete sense." Olivier Assayas
Early in Late August Early September one character says to another: "Can stories really describe the world?" It's an ironic question in the context of the film because over the next hour-and-a-half director Olivier Assayas puts that question into practice. Like many French films that make it to these shores this one is less plot driven--with a traditional payoff--than a character driven exercise that only begins to take shape close to the end.
Despite the narrative arc of a usual story about three-quarters into the film something big does happen: one of the characters dies. Yet, it's not too dramatically handled. Up to this point the film seems to have no center just a free flow of scenes and talk amongst ex-lovers, friends, family and acquaintances. But this event connects all the characters and brings them together so that they begin to contemplate their own lives.
The strength of the film is the performances by some of the best young French actors of today. The primary protagonist is Gabriel (wildly expressive-eyed Mathieu Amalric) who is sort of a disheveled chain smoking graduate student divided between two women and still undecided about his pursuits of work and life. Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) is his reckless new girlfriend and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar), his restless ex-girlfriend both of whom are dealing with the instability of their lives. The main character Adrien (Francois Cluzet) is a bitter, struggling novelist who's just turned 40 and is determined to make it big even though he won't compromise his skills for money or--for that matter--of his choice in women since he is dating a 16-year-old girl.
There is a beautifully funny angst about this movie that viewers often describe as being "typically French." And there are many scenes that can't be mistaken for anything but French--in almost every scene the characters nervously drink and smoke as they philosophize about grief, love, despair, regret and their ineffectual life in general.
Director Assayas uses an improvisational directing style (utilizing hand held camera shots, close ups and natural lighting) that deceptively make the film seem to have a random structure but it is actually rather tightly structured. Specifically with the use of six "chapters" which introduce and blend multiple characters and plots. In this way the film is similar to a series of interrelated short stories which have an accumulative effect that move towards a satisfying end.
Director Assayas whose last film Irma Vep rankled some and impressed a few often drops us into the middle of a scene without establishing a beginning or end, but as the film progresses the incidents and the facts of the character's lives come to light. Some would call this sophisticated, some would call it confusing, but the film's satisfaction comes less from the style and more from watching the characters resolve their daily dilemmas while coming to grips with their own mortality.
- Matt Langdon
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