A beautiful and moving film filled with understated yet extremely rich, quietly complex character studies. The people in this film are so real, they don't seem like fictional characters at all and the movie has the natural rhythm of real life. The interaction and inter-connections are rare in movies. Often very funny, Late August, Early September is also quite heartbreaking. One of the best films in years.

A lovely, delicate wisp of a film, following moments over the course of a year in the lives of a small group of 20 and 30 something friends, and the sickness and death of the oldest among them; their unofficial mentor, a writer who never quite succeeded.

There's no real plot, and the emotions are never intense, but there's a lot of interesting fragments that add together to give a portrait of friends and lovers struggling to grow up and find their place in the world and with each other.

I found I liked it even more on 2nd viewing, the pieces adding up to an even more delicate but emotional experience. Not quite a great film, but a likable, intelligent and admirable one.

Like many French movies, not a lot happens in this one. It follows a group of acquaintances for about a year. There are loves gained and lost, families who fight, and some who don't, secret affairs, and open ones, friends who sit around and talk in coffee shops, a lot of really mundane stuff. The bright spot is Virginie Ledoyen, who is just too pretty. (A cool thing is that French women seem to have discovered razors!!!) There is certainly a place for character studies, and slow-moving films. But this one failed to appeal to me on any level. Perhaps the language barrier was too much for me to overcome. I can't recommend this one.