Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) has made a genre shift with his newest film. Instead of deep dramas, Non-Fiction is a comedy. The film involves four main characters: a book publisher (Guillaume Canet) and his actor wife (Juliette Binoche; Caché) and a writer (Vincent Macaigne) and his wife who works in political campaigns (Nora Hamzawi). Each has their own, often interrelated, mini-crises happening, both personal and professional, and they provide the background to the film’s main focus: conversations between educated and opinionated people.
Compared to Assayas’s recent work, Non-Fiction has surprisingly poor visuals. No one expects a comedy to be visually arresting, but the lackluster images are extremely noticeable since Assayas’s past two films were well shot. Part of the problem may be that his previous two works were shot on 35mm film while Non-Fiction appears to be shot digitally and likely has a lower production budget. Digital cinematography has to potential to be gorgeous but many scenes here suffer from blatant visual flaws. An early lunch scene has noticeable digital noise with blue dots speckled in darker regions of the image. Other scenes are outdoors and are completely blown out. It doesn’t help that the film’s sequences typically revolve around sitting at a table. The many conversations are filmed with very rudimentary shot reverse shots and only the occasional handheld camera circling the cast’s dining table to mix things up. They don’t ruin the film, but the poor lighting and cinematography is often distracting.
The comedy can be uninvolving at first, but it grows on you. The jokes are subtle and come fast and furious to the point that they are easily missable, especially early on. Then, because the of the film’s literary focus, the comedy feels insular and pretentious, like a bunch of writers and publishers arguing theory with little practical purpose, but eventually this subsides. As the characters are developed, their histories are exposed and we see the fragility beneath their grand debates. All of the performances are strong, but Hamzawi emerges as the breakout. In contrast to her husband, she is practical, direct, and efficient. When her husband tells her that his book has been rejected by his longtime publisher she responds “What do you want me to do? Cry?” Her blunt responses are hilarious and the fortitude of her character is incredibly endearing. Even the other, more flawed characters have depth that drives their actions and the comedy.
Overall, this is a very French film. The majority of the movie is spent with characters eating, drinking, and, most of all, talking. People debate literature, technology, and several jokes rely on literary or film knowledge. Assayas prevents this from becoming haughty by subtly undercutting potential intellectual superiority. When esoteric references are made, it is implied that the character hasn’t actually read or seen the title they namedrop. Hypocrisy brings these bourgeois people back down to earth. The humor isn’t strikingly original or uproariously funny, but the film keeps maintains a healthy rhythm of laughs and even uses personal failings for brief moments of introspection. It’s a lighter work than his previous films, but Non-Fiction is still an enjoyable comedy for fans of talkative movies.
3/5 stars.
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