Late August, Early September (1998, Olivier Assayas) (Patreon)

64/100

Spoilers ahoy.

Second viewing, last seen at NYFF '98. It was another of my review casualties from that year's fest—all I wrote was "Sketchy and aimless but still frequently absorbing; a perfect final scene bumped it up from a B minus." (To a B, that is. 64 represents the same degree of mild enthusiasm.) That ending still works beautifully—so much so that Assayas more or less repeated it (minus Amalric's glorious consternation) in Summer Hours, for which this similarly seasonally titled film qualifies in certain respects as a dry run. Certainly I'd no longer call it "aimless," despite the lack of any clear narrative direction. Adrien's illness and eventual abrupt offscreen death function here something like the bus accident in Margaret: a huge rupture that life inevitably just swirls past. Like the seasons changing, one might say! Conceptually brilliant, but I find Late August enthralling mostly in retrospect, rather than on a moment-to-moment basis. No complaints to speak of—writing's typically sharp; performances are solid across the board; Assayas' restless, prowling camera creates a sense of urgency that belies how (deliberately) mundane much of the "action" is—but neither are there any real standout moments, apart from the ending. It's sustained low-gear expertise. Not sure whether and to what degree this is an autobiographical work, but its characters' various interactions and dynamics feel specific to the point of being...not opaque, exactly, but of somewhat limited interest to those of us who aren't personally invested in their (hypothetical) source. Might just be me, since there are certainly plenty of ardent fans who aren't chummy with Assayas IRL. Still, compared to the galvanizing astonishments of Cold Water and Irma Vep—the two features that immediately precede it in his filmography—it seems like a very pleasant stroll.