One of France’s greatest directors gets plugged in
Olivier Assayas has been on quite the roll in recent years with his last couple of projects. The director’s compelling Clouds of Sils Maria tackled ageism and obsession in the most magnificent of ways, creating an entirely new reality in the process. Later, Personal Shopper saw the creation of an entirely new kind of ghost story with one of the most haunted protagonists to ever grace the big screen. Both films reaffirmed Assayas’ standing as one of the most poetic and inventive film directors working today through his spellbinding stories and well-written characters. With his latest feature, Non-Fiction, Assayas strips away all the mystery and style of his two previous films for something that is characteristically quite the opposite. With themes of technology, fidelity, and literary merit, the latest from one of the modern greats isn’t necessarily a triumph, but shows once more Assayas’ ability to be a filmmaker with a wide range of untapped sensibilities.
In Non-Fiction, a group of Parisians (Juliette Binoche, Guillaume Canet, Vincent Macaigne, Christa Theret, and Nora Hamzawi) struggle to come to terms with their relationships to one another as they try to navigate the ever-changing digital world. Through it all, the need to connect both electronically and emotionally takes over each person in their quest to find balance in their lives.
The most noticeable aspect of Non-Fiction is the overabundance of dialogue it contains. There’s hardly a scene in which a character doesn’t get a wrap of words containing various levels of meanings to unleash. Thankfully (although unsurprisingly), the dialogue in the film is great and relevant, inspiring thoughts and comment at nearly every turn. However, Assayas gives his characters far too much at times, to the point that certain sequences verge on developing the feel of a college lecture, with the audience doing everything short of taking actual notes in an effort to keep up. The over-reliance on speeches here can very well be seen as a sort of rebuke on Assayas’ part regarding how dialogue-sparse Personal Shopper was. While the lack of actual talking was necessary for that film, here the director seems to be challenging himself by seeing how much ideology and conflict he can insert into every scene by giving his characters a laundry list of talking points. The main one which keeps popping up over and over is the idea of reading in the digital age and how physical books occupy a very limited existence in today’s world. Assayas does his best to lay out an exhaustive compilation of pros and cons to the wave of technology which has taken us over, only subtly pledging his allegiance with one over the other. Assayas’ take on how the current state of tech culture has bled into the human side of things to perhaps an irrevocable point is made well enough in ways which go beyond dialogue, such as one character routinely packing and unpacking her half-dozen devices upon leaving and returning.
Eventually, Assayas ventures into Woody Allen territory with Non-Fiction, placing his couples in a French version of Husbands and Wives with various partners calling each other out on their shortcomings while venting their own frustrations. One character feels neglected by another, who does everything possible to avoid facing the fractures in the relationship. Another character is mentally trying to keep his affair with a protege (who is actually in love with another woman) a secret, while yet another character’s decade-long secret romance with someone else is now facing an impasse. Assayas manages to break away from the maddening nature of his take on modernity to actually talk about what it is that makes his characters as deeply conflicted as they are. Where Assayas succeeds in marrying the themes of the human experience and the practice of a connectedness to the modern world is in his exploration of “auto fiction.” As described to us by a book signing attendee, auto fiction refers to the act of transferring the past experiences of one’s own life to the page, changing names/dates/places in an effort to fictionalize the events. It’s a somewhat brazen, yet totally fair move on Assayas’ part to call out revered figures who have made careers out of what is essentially described in the film as a glorified diary. Still, there isn’t a viciousness to Assayas’ commentary, but rather a desire for the existence of more original works of art from those he believes capable of creating it. Watching this aspect of Non-Fiction, it becomes clear that the director firmly believes that despite the overwhelming technological landscape, such work still has a place in today’s society.
Few directors have ever been able to make full use of Binoche’s talents the way Assayas can. Not only did the filmmaker capture her best performance with Clouds, but here he takes a woman with the same profession and gives her a totally different makeup, which the Oscar-winner inhabits so succinctly as she brings to life a character with everything who feels as if something is eluding her. Even if Binoche doesn’t reach the same levels of brilliance as she did in her previous collaboration with Assayas, her work remains nothing short of invigorating and hypnotic. All of the other actors manage to acquit themselves well alongside Binoche, while also successfully presenting Assayas’ myriad social arguments. However it’s Macaigne who gives the best performance as an artist caught in the crossroads, both personally and professionally, unable to find the same kind of meaning in either like he was once able to.
If there’s one main takeaway to leave Non-Fiction with, it’s the remarkable way the film carries its audience throughout. It’s virtually impossible to not go from being instantly familiar with the characters to feeling immediately taken by every conversation they engage in, regardless of subject matter. It’s a common thread shared by every Assayas effort, which has unmistakably become his trademark. I feel it’s safe to say that there must be something about the current culture and just where his generation fits into it. In that regard, Non-Fiction seems to have been made in the same vein as Darren Aronofsky’s mother! — another example of a film helmed by an artist trying to make sense of the world around him through his work. Like mother!, Non-Fiction will not be considered the director’s greatest offering. The results are mixed for sure, perhaps owing to the fact that Assayas himself is probably still trying to understand the world he created.