Having chronicled the heady abandon of adolescence in COLD WATER, renowned French auteur Olivier Assayas turned his attention to another in-between stage of life: the moment when the seemingly endless possibilities of young adulthood begin to give way to the anxieties of middle age. A cast of Gallic luminaries—including Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Balibar, Virginie Ledoyen, Alex Descas, and future director Mia Hansen-Løve (in her film debut)—play a coterie of friends and lovers swirling around the Parisian publishing industry whose romantic, professional, and personal crises are amplified when one of their companions, a neglected novelist (François Cluzet), falls seriously ill. Unfolding in a handheld-shot rush of richly impressionistic images and set to the seductive rhythms of Ali Farka Touré, LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER masterfully charts the delicate shifts in relationships that occur as subtly and inexorably as the changing of the seasons.