Non-fiction
Two boys, three girls, how many possibilities ?
Film. Fable about the culturel and the digital, Non-fiction, directed by Olivier Assayas is more than the parisian marivaudage it seems to be. Explanations.
By Quentin Moyon
Non-Fiction invits us in the daily life of Alain (Guillaume Canet), a successful literaly publisher and his wife Selena (Juliette Binoche), a theater actress – and reluctantly – of television. They have best friend : Léonard (Vincent Macaigne), a writer who tries to write about his personal stories, and his wife Valérie (first big part for Nora Hamzawi) as a political activist.
Alain is Léonard’s publisher and their group is composed by producers and content manager, whose relationships barely gets out the schemes beaten and rebuttled. The arrival of Laure (Christa Theret who growned up since LOL) as a digital developmentalist in Alain’s business adds one more piece into this mechanics and this is the breakdown. Alain refuses to publish Léonard’s new book and the couples discards themselves to recomposed differently.
“Assayas as an observer of a multitude of affections and fully human relations : encounters and breaks, aspirations and resentment, tenderness and jealousy.
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The Art, the publisher and the dialectic
As a tribute to l’Arbre, Le Maire et La Médiathéque (1993) from Eric Rohmer, the movie shows the confrontation of two realities, two visions : the Old World of paper and books and the New Kingdom of digital and e-book. We then find all the know-how of Oliver Assayas who with spirit and subtlety, avoids describing a Manichean fight. He places himself more as an observer of a multitude of affections and fully human relations : encounters and breaks, aspirations and resentment, tenderness and jealousy.
The movie is really about dialectic and tries to exceeds the opposition which constitutes it : “Everything must change so that nothing changes “says Guillaume Canet, a clever reference to The Leopard of Visconti on which is built the story that similarly mocks the intellectual conservatism of the Old World as the superficiality of the New. It is also not forbidden to see the reflections of the filmmaker on his job at the time of Netflix.
