Singapore International Film Festival 2018
Non-Fiction
Language
French - subtitles to be advised
Cast
Juliette Binoche, Guillaume Canet, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi
Synopsis
Alain is a successful Parisian book publisher amidst the digital literary revolution. Faced with a new manuscript from his long-time writer Léonard—a thinly veiled work of auto-fiction recycling Léonard’s love affair with a minor celebrity—Alain must make a difficult creative choice. Simultaneously, he grapples with his fluctuating relationship with his wife, Selena, and the conflicting viewpoints of his friends and colleagues.
Assayas renders the push and pull of his characters’ desires in elegant cinematic language, and his crackling dialogue offers an insight into their intellectual curiosities. As actors Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche and their co-stars spar on the vicissitudes of Twitter, Taylor Swift and Theodor Adorno, Assayas wryly pulls apart the emotional and professional consequences of their every decision.