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The sublime Late August, Early September, a story of aquartet of Parisian adults (young and not so young) grappling withlove, indecision, and crises of confidence, is not titled for a time ofyear but for a feeling, a tone, and a sense of passage. Self-conscious,shy writer Mathieu Amalric (My Sex Life...) is fast approaching30 and furiously second guessing every step he makes. He's broken itoff with delightfully gawky yet graceful Jeanne Balibar and is in themidst of an affair with the wild Virginie Ledoyen (The Beach), asexy, young, sweet-and-sour girl with the temper of a diva. FrancoisCluzet (Round Midnight), a cult author with a teenagegirlfriend, is the old man of the bunch and an uncomfortable mentor toAmalric.

Shooting with a restless camera that bobs around searching for a betterlook, and fading out of scenes before they end, as if life continues onpast our privileged peek, Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep) has anunusual and unique style. It's like he catches his characters offguard, capturing moments of hesitation and discomfort, when the socialfront can't quite hide their fears and frustrations. All the better toappreciate their little triumphs. Not much really "happens" in thedrama, but the quirky Assayas beautifully captures a portrait in messyemotions, inarticulation, and contradiction with modesty and sympathy.--Sean Axmaker ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Slow evolving character development
This is your typical slow evolving character development film that tries to capture a slice of life. More down trodden than up lifting and not really reflective of my life or anybody elses that I know which is typical of most French Films.

Life as it is
"Late August, Early September" depicts life as it is for two struggling writers trying to proclaim a space in modern literary world while meeting everyday chores of life and relationship. The movie has its own pace of revealing its characters and their interactions from an observatory angle. It also examines one very sensitive, tender yet socially uncomfortable relationship between a teen and a mature writer who just found himself questioning his achievement in his career at forty.

Intriguing and identifiable characters
Some will say french melodramas are too understated and long winded but i found myself thoroughly enjoying this character-driven gem. Editing is reminescent of Godard with its jump-cut scene transitions and non-static camera movements. If you like slow character-evolving films without the overt freudian-analysis and preaching, go check out the film at a rental before purchasing.

The Best French Film of the Year
Late August, Early September is a gem. If you like Rohmer, but need more 'character complexity', this film will satisfy your need for intellectual stimulation, poignancy, and reality.

This film is to cinema what Kundera is to literature. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Love is everything
I read the reviews of quite a few people for this film and would like to comment on certain things omitted from their analysis. For starters, this is a movie about LIFE, so where to start with life? Pick a time zone for the beginning and end of the film. The comment of one intelligent reviewer was that the movie had no "meat" in the beginning or end and that the "meat" was in the middle, but he just doesn't understand that this is merely a movie about life. Why cut out the trip to America? The movie tries to realistically portray business problems and the problems with competing internationally, and it shows how management tried to deal with their problems, and portrayed management as being inept, which happens in life! This reviewer says there is no substance in this movie, but I submit that the reviewer did not pay attention while watching the movie.

This is a wonderful movie about life and the problems of life and relationships, and of love that dies, and a man that is brave enough at the end of the film to admit his shortcomings in life and to finally realize that love is everything, and that without love there is nothing, and this comment concludes the movie, while flashing back to the ballroom dancing, in the beginning, in the year 1900, when this couple was young and in love, which gives the movie closure; characters that you don't like are supposed to not be liked!!

I liked this movie very much and watch lots of international movies and like French films, and this is one of the best films I've seen in quite some time and gets close to a 10 out of 10 rating in my book. The movie appears to start and end abruptly, but keep in mind that this is only a movie about life, and that the starting point and ending point are merely moments in time.

Love endures--this film will not.
Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the case of the film "Les Destinees," the beginning is in 1900, and the end arrives three decades later. In the middle is the meat of this film, and this includes:

A scandalous divorce
An idyllic soujourn in Switzerland
The First World War
The fortunes of a porcelain producing family
The inside of a swinging Parisian nightclub circa 1930
A religious conversion
An adulterous affair
The stock market crash of the 1920s
The production of several lines of porcelain
Cherry picking

And I have probably missed a few things...

Now while this DVD may last three hours, there is enough material in this film to make a mini-series. This is a sumptuous epic--gorgeous sets, marvellous scenery, wonderful costumes--but somehow or another all these lovely trappings just left me cold. It was like consuming a beautiful but hollow cake--perfect icing, but nothing underneath. The story was just too involved to condense adequately and meaningfully into three hours. There were many scenes that added nothing at all to the main thread of the story--the enduring nature of love. Many of the scenes could have been very comfortably cut from the film--at absolutely no loss to the plot. What was the trip to America all about? It added nothing--except, I suppose, it helped qualify "Les Destinees" as an epic, and the bar scene with all the wild young ones, and the religious conversion. Chop, chop chop--all worthless.

Charles Berling was excellent as the minister who dumps the church, but Emmanuelle Beart as his wife, Pauline was too wooden and pouty for my tastes. She trounced around the sets like a little girl. She looks good, but the acting....Now I am going to add here that I usually LOVE French films, and consume a regular diet of foreign films. This was a disappointment. If I rate "Les Destinees" against other French films, I would probably give it two stars, but if I match it against most of the tripe out there, it starts to look better, so for this reason, I am giving it three stars. If you are a French film fan, you may very well be disappointed in this.

A Thought Provoking Epic Tale
The production of porcelain and cognac are the axis around which this film revolves. The film documents and dramatizes the sacrifice involved in maintaining quality during hard political and personal times. Covering several decades, the film intelligently probes philosophical themes of love, duty, family, and death. The acting is superb. Be aware that the movie is some 3 hours, so allot the time. One of my favorite scenes is the waltz scene; the grace of this dance is captured by the turn of the head of Pauline (Beart).

A Visually Magnificent Tale of the Endurance of Love
LES DESTINEES is another one of those period pieces that reminds us of how magic cinema can be. Set at the turn of the century the plot revolves around a triangle of two women and a man who rediscover themselves at the cost of the changes the world endured in the time of the great wars. The importance of family is approached in a pungent way, fighting as it does here against the discovery of honest love: how far will a man of means risk his profession and his marriage for the love of an outsider? Though the story has oft been written and told, much of the success of this film lies in the capable acting hands of Isabelle Huppert, Emannuelle Beart, and Charles Berling. Erring on being a bit too long, the technical aspects of this film seamlessly hold your attention - a vital stage for some fine storytelling and acting.

an excellent movie.
I enjoyed this movie very much. It is a well crafted tale covering a long period of time of this family. It is rather long,approx three hours, but thoroughly enjoyable. It is on my will purchase list. ... Read more

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In the tradition of films about filmmaking, Irma Vep takes itsown special place among such films as Fellini's 8½. A has-been director decides to remake the silent French serial film Les Vampires starring a Hong Kong action film superstar. The production is falling behind schedule and its star, Maggie Cheung (who plays herself), finds herself an outsider with the film's crew save for a woman costumer (Nathalie Richard) who has a crush on her. Rene the director (Jean-Pierre Leaud) cast Maggie after viewing one of her many martial-arts fantasy films. Although he finds her perfect for the part of the jewel thief in Les Vampires, the rest of the crew cannot see the reasons for casting Maggie beyond her beauty and how she looks in her tight-fitting latex costume. Rene's vision is soon lost on everyone and he suffers a mental breakdown. The film is reassigned to Jose (Lou Castel), a seemingly more commanding director (although he takes the job because his welfare is about to run out), whose first decision is to fire Maggie. Irma Vep is presented as a comedy, but at its heart lies an examination of the art and craft of filmmaking. In a clever turn, Maggie creeps around her hotel getting into character, in essence remaking Irma Vep for real-life director Olivier Assayas. Assayas wrote the film in 10 days and shot the film in a month after meeting Maggie Cheung at a film festival--a fascinating case of life imitating art... or is it the other way around? --Shannon Gee ... Read more

Reviews (25)

Notions in different directions...
Maggie Cheung, as herself, comes to Paris to partake in a remake of Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires as Irma Vep. However, when Maggie arrives three days late to the set she finds a disorganized film company trying to hold together a group of actors, a crew, and filmmakers who all have different agendas. Nevertheless, Maggie tries her hardest to fit in, even though she does not speak any French, and she tries to get a good grip of the character that she intends to cast. Meanwhile, the director is having problems keeping himself emotionally together and the film's future becomes jeopardized. Irma Vep is an interesting film that portraits thoughts that are not followed through with or that cannot be followed through with unless they are organized.

Quelque chose de different
The French do self-reflexive cinema better than we do. This tale of a has-been director attempting a comeback with a re-make of a silent French serial (and using a non-French speaking real-life Maggie Cheung in the title role) is the ultimate exercise in cinematic intertextuality. But it's also a lot ofe fun and not--as one of the film's own characters grouses about the state of French cinema--just intellectual navel gazing. Not for everyone, of course, but for lovers of cinematic irony, it's hard to think of a more delightful feelm.

Leaping latex lesbian vampyres, Rocky!
I truly fail to understand those who consider this a serious cinematic masterpiece. It pales in comparison, for instance, with other Maggie Cheung vehicles such as "In the Mood for Love" or "Song of the Exile". Indeed, one of the four rating stars is purely for the presence of Maggie as something at least close to her off screen persona (ok, I admit to a bit of a crush here :-).

On the other hand, it is not the abysmal drek others rate it. The plot is drolly amusing, along the lines of a mid-level American TV sitcom. And as one who has been in similar situations a few times, the depiction of Maggie's perplexity and detachment when thrust into making a film in Paris while speaking no French rings true.

The side-plot of Zoe, the costumier, who develops a crush on Maggie while fitting her with the black latex catsuit in a Paris sex shop, is amusing and well handled. Nathalie Richard is just right (and dang cute) as Zoe, a grown woman regressed to breathless teenage puppy love.

Maggie wanders through it all with gracious aplomb as everything and everybody is falling apart around her, intrigued by Zoe's interest though ultimately declining.

For those who haven't read the previous hundred reviews, a brief summary: Maggie Cheung, playing herself, arrives in Paris on a movie set in chaos. The director has chosen her to play the part of a cat burglar (Irma Vep) in a remake of a classic silent film, on the basis of obsessive viewing of Cheung's Hong Kong action films (I think it was Heroic Trio he was watching). [Real life director Arrayas was Cheung's boyfriend, later husband. Art imitating life, or vice versa?] Maggie is the calm center of a swirl of studio politics, backbiting and romantic advances (male and female). She goes to a late night party, and one night dreams (?) that she gets tricked up in her cat suit and burgles another room in her hotel. The director, dysfuntional at best, eventuallly has a breakdown. A new director decides he needs a French actress to play a classic French role, and Maggie accepts calmly(probably glad to get out of this mess). The last we hear is that she has cashed in her return ticket for a flight to New York to meet an American director.

Hmm...
Seeing this movie has left me flabbergasted. I guess it's one of those either-you-love-it-or-hate-it movies. But let me be objective about this. It comes across as a masochistic satire on contemporary filmmaking, ridiculing on all points the folly of churning out meaningless movies filled with gore, violence, and Schwarzenegger. The storyline is simple: Director wants to shoot movie, crew is unstable, everything falls apart... and voila... the 5-minute ending redeems the 2-hour jargon that just took place before your eyes. But you can't beat having Maggie Cheung running around in that latex suit. Overall acting was precise, intense, and really, you can't ask for more. There is lot of handheld camera movement, so make sure to take your motion sickness pills. I sat watching this movie flicker in front of me. One hour later, I was still waiting for something good to happen. I am somewhat disappointed, I guess. I feel that a lot of time has been wasted on cinebabble. The ending's good, though. All in all, I'd rather have watched 20 minutes worth of the film than in its entirety.

The movie sucks the life out of you.
Unbearably pretentious rot. *Irma Vep* has nothing going for it, unless you consider the admittedly enjoyable spectacle of Maggie Cheung tromping around in skin-tight black latex. It's shot in the form of a "documentary" about a French re-do of the silent-era film serial *Les Vampires*. First of all, why would anyone want to remake *Les Vampires*? -- second of all, why would anyone want to watch a documentary about the making of it? It's unpalatable any way you look at it. Further, director Olivier Assayas embarrasses us by having Jean-Pierre Leaud ("Antoine Doinel" from Truffaut's *The 400 Blows*) attempt to speak English: the result is a mumbling disaster. It's as if Assayas is purposefully trying to denigrate the entire French cinematic tradition, from the silent classics (Arletty is invoked, of course; no lustre rubs off) to the New Wave. Meanwhile, Maggie Cheung looks mystified and somehwat irritated at the proceedings. The ending, by the way, is one of the worst I've ever seen. ... Read more