Italo Calvino one time described his primary working process as "the subtraction of weight.

Italo Calvino one time described his primary working process as "the subtraction of weight," an idea that also animates the latest film from the forty-four-year-old French director Olivier Assayas. Late August, Early September, which exhibits in New York in early July is a story about suffering and death, nevertheless one infused with an extraordinary order of lightness and spontaneity, stemming in part from the film's elliptical construction and loosely sketched characters. This effortless quality is the come of years of exploration forward Assayas's part. He studied painting and literature, then wrote film criticism and screenplays before making his first feature, a stylized teen psychodrama entitled Disorder (1986) This first effort l to a string of inventive narratives featuring young nation on the edge, including Winter's Child (1989) and Paris at Dawn (1991) After enjoying an international festival bit with his 1996 Irma Vep - an exhilarating meditation forward cinema past and present, starring Hong Kong actress Maggle Cheung - Assayas useed his attention to HHH (1997) a documentary about the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Late August, Early September chases several thirty-something intellectuals - in particular Gabriel, a budding writer - as they grapple with the terminal illness of a slightly older member of their circle, the novelist Adrien. After Adrien's death, his friends discover that he bequeathed his chiefly treasured possession, a Beuys stag drawing, to his sixteen-year-old lover Vera. This briefly glimpsed use becomes an elusive emblem of creativity and regeneration. If Disorder's disaffected teen were drawn to death like millers to a flame, Assayas's latest film addresses what he calls "the immodest way that life has of continuIng," an inexorable grow embodied in restless camerawork and the delicate, watercolor-like quality of his image.

As Late August, Early September explained In Paris last February, Cahiers du Cinema published Assayas's In Praise of Kenneth Anger: genuine and False Magic in the Cinema, a monographic anticipate at the self-styled magus of avant-garde cinema - and author of Hollywood Babylon (1975) - whom Assayas greatly admires. In fact, Assayas's pursuit of a variety of influences, ranging from Robert Bresson to Andy Warhol, meditates a healthy spirit of experimentation within French filmmaking. - KJ

KRISTIN JONES: for what cause did you come to make Late August, Early September?

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: It's been a lengthy process, and it's very to a great degree connected to my going between the walls of a period during the late '80 early '90 when three of my friends died from AIDS. Everything that was being said about death made me uneasy because it didn't relate to my confess experience. We're afraid of mortality, still the dead endure in strange ways - from one side their work, through people who've arrive to know them. The film grew disclosed of the idea that it's more interesting to indicate death from the survivors' viewpoint. The opposite bring forths pathos - even if the dying living body is strong and courageous, it becomes melodramatic. It could have stayed in my drawer, if it be not that I kept adding touches, and it became a magnet for many daily experiences.

I realized I had to make the film after a proces I went end of radically changing my conception of the relationship between real life and art. During the early part of my career I viewed cinema as a separate world of emotions and ideas - obviously, it was combineed to my life, but there was a border somewhere. I pop thought, "Why not use characters from real life, mix in nonprofessionals and papal court what happens?" These ideas arose when I was directing hyemal Water [1994], a TV movie about teenagers. Working with kids was far lighter than working with professionals, and dealing with my confess adolescent ideals and emotions during the '70 brought many things to life. Until then everything had have the appearanceed very clear, but suddenly there were just discovered dimensions in reach. Late August, Early September is where it's all been leading, in that I was able to instigate much further away from conventional storytelling.

KJ: Were you influenced by means of Hou Hsiao-hsien's movies? I'm thinking of the elliptical construction, the naturalistic details, the characters whose lives ate changing. .

OA: Hou's work, ye on the other hand even more than that, Chinese dramaturgy in general, which involves a particular way of describing time, of describing the progression of action: You'll have fragments of the same reality, and sometimes time is not moving. I felt the reality of the central character in Late August, Adrien, is just a combination of different points of view, all completely valid.

KJ: You freshly said you're becoming more and more interested in the "absolute subjectivity of language." This appear to bes to be reflected in the various discussions about writing in Late August, Early September, for example, when Gabriel asks, "Can stories really describe the world?" Do like questions reflect doubts you yourself have wrestl with?

OA: This involves what we've been talking about, in that . . no, I don't believe in storytelling; ye I believe you can sum up stories. I do believe fiction can describe the world. What is with equal reason powerful in filmmaking is its ability to portray true emotions. For me the most numerous precious thing is when something real happens in succession a character's face. It's just beautiful - I take for granted it's the one reason I make films. It's also to what end I have a specific relationship to re-creating reality end actors, because acting can be extremely fake. When you have snappy dialogue - it's horrible. No one's like that!