Set in the Parisian publishing world, an editor and an author find themselves in over their heads, as they cope with a middle-age crisis, the changing industry, and their wives.
I loved Olivier Assayas’ character study/spooky ghost story “Personal Shopper” (read my review here). While he doesn’t quite top it with his latest talky feature, “Non-Fiction,” Assayas officially cements his status as one of our most prolific, astute and unpredictable living filmmakers. His subtle studies of human nature and social paradigm shifts bring to mind the works of Oren Moverman (“Time Out of Mind”), Neil LaBute (“Your Friends and Neighbors”) and Michael Haneke, who’s worked with “Non-Fiction” star Juliette Binoche on several occasions, and whose frigid “White Ribbon” is frequently referenced in “Non-Fiction.” That’s just one of the meta touches Assayas applies to his feature; at one point, the bohemian protagonists wonder if they could get Juliette Binoche to voice one of their audiobooks. There’s a plethora of wonderings, musings, deliberations, and soliloquies, but Assayas gets away with the sometimes-repetitive speechifying because said speechifying is so perceptive, witty and relevant.
The story revolves around five Parisian intellectuals: cynical publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet); his wife, sophisticated Selena (Juliette Binoche); his progressive lover Laure (Christa Théret); the insecure writer Léonard (Vincent Macaigne); and Léonard’s cold politician wife Valérie (Nora Hamzawi). Léonard also happens to sleep with Selena, Assayas drawing parallels between infidelity and the duplicity of the contemporary publishing world. Léonard’s latest “auto-fiction” manuscript accurately reflects his life, to the point where Alain feels uncomfortable publishing it. Then there’s Laure’s pontificating about our hallowed digitized future, wherein books become extinct, replaced with screens, as paragraphs are replaced with haikus, and words with abbreviations.
Politics, literature, film, commerce, art, love – all topics touched upon, and the film would be squashed from the weightiness of it all, were it not for Assayas’ skillful direction and, of course, stellar acting from the leads. Binoche is especially luminous, imbuing her character with both gravitas and lightness, sophistication and pathos, another stellar turn from one of our very best actresses. Canet is right up there with her, having built a remarkable career, and effortlessly delivering lines which, coming from a lesser actor, may have sounded forced. Macaigne and Hamzawl excel as the polar-opposite couple whose disparity is the very foundation for their chemistry, and Théret is both resolute and delicate.
Assays maintains a sardonic tone throughout; amidst the deluge of crap we get in theaters these days, his sharp dialogue is music to the ears. Sure, all the “high-browness” may come at the cost of relatable characterization (no one’s quite this cerebral in real life), but hey, we should all aspire to possess Assayas’ linguistic skills. An examination of our faster-than-ever-changing society, “Non-Fiction” both laments the analog past and embraces the digital future. All this speechifying is bound to provoke lengthy discussions of your own.
In theaters Friday, May 3rd
