Non-Fiction (Doubles Vies)

Director Olivier Assayas with actress Juliette Binoche

NON-FICTION (Doubles Vies)            C+               

aka:  Double Lives

France  (108 mi)  2018  d:  Olivier Assayas

Arguably the director’s weakest film, a bungling attempt to offer something important to say about the changing digital landscape, yet for all its chattiness and endless conversations about the publishing business, it becomes clumsy and wretchedly monotonous, playing a viciously circular game questioning the future of books, newspapers, and even the existence of libraries themselves, all supposedly replaced by digital content that will render the printed page meaningless.  Disappointed, to say the least, as Assayas is one of the more inventive modern directors, yet this has surprisingly little to say, instead falling into a typical bourgeois world of comfort and complacency.  Despite a first rate cast, Assayas’s written script leaves something to be desired, as it all amounts to pure speculation, though it’s treated like a done deal, filled with facts and figures for arguments in support, including the latest trends, which comes across like something out of a business investment magazine, where it’s preached like the gospel, only to later discover that the rush to judgment was a bit premature, rendering all the previous arguments as utter rubbish, yet that’s what constitutes the core of the movie.  Told in a freewheeling style, like a screwball comedy, the brisk pace of the film is quick and concise, with little room for hesitation, almost exclusively taking place in the tightly compressed spaces of offices, hotel rooms, bars and café’s, and the enclosed intimacy of home.  Exposing what duplicitous lives we lead, having a secret lover on the side while engaged in long-term relationships, where the divide is lack of trust, which mirrors the newspaper or print media, which has never been more guilty at telling targeted audiences exactly what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not, ignoring journalistic integrity and even standards of decency, developing a callous and indifferent attitude about destroying lives in the process by spreading rumors or gossip, especially when based on bad information, but what matters is whether or not they have a readership or viewing audience.  While the prevailing argument is that people read less today, the counter argument is that this is blatantly untrue, only the source is different, as they’re not reading as many novels or newspapers, but they’re reading texts, websites, and blog information instead, picking and choosing their sources.  While this opens up the floodgates on a discussion about the digital world, it barely touches the surface, offering trends and superficial points of view that may or may not have meaning, as it’s still too early to tell, and instead feels like a group of like-minded, white, over-privileged bourgeois individuals tossing their own opinions around, ignoring large segments of the globe who think differently than they do, whose ideas are completely ignored because it doesn’t fit the business model.  So what this really tells us in an interglobal world is that we’re only really interested in ourselves, rarely venturing out of our comfort zones.

Even the English title is misleading, as non-fiction suggests truth, not fiction, yet there’s very little underlying truth about this film, instead it’s swarming with the latest rumors and gossip, filled with self-centered people who couldn’t care less about what’s happening in the world, so long as they can lead comfortable lives.  The French title is more accurate, suggesting truth is ever more elusive, holding double meanings, which means different things to different audiences, which makes it that much harder to reach any common understanding.  At the center of the picture is a bourgeois, middle class couple, like the ones depicted in Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) (2005), where Alain (Guillaume Canet) is an erudite book publisher with a fashionable actress wife Selena (Juliette Binoche), and while they have a young son he barely makes his presence felt, like he’s an afterthought, certainly not the center of their world.  Their lives conveniently revolve around themselves, including a massive home, an upscale Audi car, and all creature comforts, where they’re used to eating in the nicest restaurants.  While Selena makes tons of money playing a cop on TV (for the fourth season), she’s quick to point out she’s not a cop, but a crisis management expert.  In the scenes we see, however, the focus of attention is on guns blasting, going full-on assault mode, where there’s little effort spent managing any crisis, as they are too busy inflicting one instead.  Early on Alain has a business meeting and lunch with one of his longtime authors, Leonard (Vincent Macaigne), but refuses to publish his new work, which feels more like his sleazy sexual exploits surrounded by more autobiographical self-aggrandizement.  Just so you can understand the eloquent and flowery manner of speech Alain uses throughout the conversation, remaining tactful and inoffensive, Leonard never gets the picture his work is being turned down, which comes as quite a surprise at the end, especially after all the so-called complimentary talk.  The two are like polar opposites, with Alain immaculately dressed, his words carefully chosen, his home a picture of tasteful décor, while Leonard stumbles and stammers, never really getting his thoughts out, and dresses shabbily, where his apartment is a mess, as nothing is apparently ever put away.  His live-in girlfriend Valerie (Nora Hamzawi), on the other hand, is more like Alain, concise in her expression, saying exactly what she means, and is the real breadwinner in the family, working as a high profile attorney while supporting a socially conscious Socialist political candidate who is having trouble getting his message across, as it can’t be explained in the television sound bites and twitter universe.  Valerie’s matter-of-fact way of handling things is the complete opposite of Leonard, making it clear she couldn’t care less about his publishing troubles, while Leonard’s prone to think he’s the center of the known universe. 

While these four characters represent the focus of the film, as the film progresses we witness how cavalierly they cheat on one another.  Alain has hired a first rate head of digital operations who seems fresh out of university, always providing definitive answers about the death of the book publishing industry, having been raised in an era that immersed themselves in technology and the Internet, she finds it so much simpler and more advantageous than the “old ways,” and e-books are so much cheaper and can be transported anywhere.  Not only does Alain give her free rein at the company, he’s having an affair with this much younger girl as well, which feels a bit humorous, as she loves the sex but has utter contempt for what he does for a living.  Perhaps more surprising, Selena has been carrying on an affair with Leonard for years, and is his biggest booster, but is highly slighted when he publishes personal elements of their relationship, using it for material in his books, which she instantly recognizes and then has to cover her tracks afterwards, suggesting that’s someone else.  This fictionalized line is expressed to her husband, serving as a misdirection, though it becomes a central piece of her marriage, where preserving secrets and lies is essential.  Valerie has similar problems with her political candidate’s sexual misadventures which must be kept from the press, preserving his image at all costs, where lying is an essential ingredient.  While they all have positive attributes, they spend their lives covering up a darker underside, where they are never quite what they seem, but are instead understood by how they appear to be, where much of what they project is all an act.  Marriages fall apart from bad acting, apparently, as people don’t sell their lies as well.  While they all retreat to friendly groups and are connected to larger social circles that endlessly discuss the topics of the day, where Valerie finds it unnerving that even her closest associates find it difficult to support her candidate, or Selena gets embarrassed at the thought of selling out for commercial gain, finding little or no value in her television series, as it’s not the least bit challenging, but she gets a gargantuan salary that supports her lavish lifestyle.  The way things play out does challenge our growing dependence on technology, confronting radical changes in our changing world, where various points of view are aired, but it’s hard to find anything new or revelatory about this film, just as it’s hard to place meaning or value on the rapidly changing Internet culture, which is always in a state of flux, instead it just rehashes all the various opinions we’ve already heard before, mostly just skimming the surface.  Cinematically this lacks verve and imagination, especially compared to Demonlover (2002), for instance, one of the first films to examine the effects of the digital age.  While we have never heard Assayas flail away and be so repetitious in his films before, endlessly belaboring ideas that amount to little more than cliché’s, with characters that couldn’t be less appealing, so myopic in their own lives, sending signals of utter complacency by the end, hardly a message that needs airing, where of all the Assayas films seen, this one has the least to offer.

Note

The film inaccurately attributes a quote from Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s historic novel The Leopard, published posthumously in 1958, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change,” suggesting it was uttered near the end by Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, a character who was deeply resistant to change, but in fact it was spoken much earlier by his nephew Tancredi Falconieri, the voice of a new generation, remarking upon the continuance of Sicilian aristocratic life.  One wonders if this was done intentionally, as Assayas is extremely well-read, suggesting that in today’s world, as suggested by Kiarostami’s CERTIFIED COPY (2010), fake truth is just as easily accepted as the actual truth.  

Personal Shopper

Swedish painter Hilma af Klint

 

Director Olivier Assayas at Cannes

 

PERSONAL SHOPPER                    B+                  

France  Germany  (105 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Olivier Assayas           Official site

It’s important to remember that Assayas was a painter before he became a filmmaker, where the remarkable fluidity of his film style may be attributed to his ability to visualize ahead of time the exact look he wants onscreen, where a rush of images resemble an improvisatory style of painting, perhaps accentuating the spontaneity of the moment, using a contemplative, stream-of-conscious narrative that comprises a radically modernist film style, at times somber and reflective, while at other times feeling like an assault to the senses.  Here he resorts to an old-fashioned, haunted house genre, conjuring up dead spirits and ghosts from the past, which at times is amusing, like an homage to Hitchcock, a filmmaker having fun and playing with the art of his craft, yet also delves into the horror genre, where fear and existential angst create an absorbing interior dread.  At the center of the picture, and in nearly every shot, is the young protagonist Maureen (Kristen Stewart, who seems to inhabit the role), an American in Paris, a psychic medium who believes she is capable of communicating with a spirit world.  Some in the audience will giggle, constantly whisper amongst themselves, and simply never get past this point, as they will find the premise too preposterous, too far-fetched and unbelievable, especially the use of cheesy CGI effects in an otherwise realistic film.  While the film was booed at Cannes, this is largely because a prominent French filmmaker made a film starring a tabloid celebrated American actress where the predominate language spoken is English, yet others, to be sure, are among this camp of ardent disbelievers.  Assayas, however, has always been on the cutting edge of new technology, prominently featuring an iPhone as a secondary character, where the narrative is advanced by rapid text conversations from someone identified as “Unknown,” which gives the film something instantly recognizable, while also adding an element of mystery and intrigue.  Using a film-within-a-film device, Maureen becomes riveted by watching a documentary piece on her phone about Swedish abstract painter Hilma af Klint (1862 – 1944), (Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction (eng.sub) - YouTube, 22:01), who claimed to be a clairvoyant, who was told by spirit voices to paint “on the astral plane,” whose work is derived from mysticism and the awareness of higher levels of consciousness, an aspect that is currently being marginalized in an increasingly materialistic world.  Af Klint is another psychic believer who conducted séances with other artists, whose occult-inspired paintings were among the first representations of abstract art, so she refused to publicly show these paintings during her lifetime, knowing they would not be understood, as they were believed to be decades before their time, released twenty years after her death, as stipulated by her will, where in an interesting parallel, the creativity behind these paintings was inspired by “unknown” forces.  

Like the last Assayas film, 2014 Top Ten List #3 Clouds of Sils Maria, the director’s first collaboration with Stewart, she plays another disaffected assistant to an overbearing star.  While she played a secondary role in the earlier film, here she is the centerpiece, where we see everything through her eyes.  While the film is comprised with on-the-street, cinéma vérité moments of Kristen Stewart zipping around Paris and London on a moped picking out ultra chic designer outfits and Cartier jewelry for an haut couture fashion model star who is rarely ever seen, Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten), whose domineering reputation precedes her, where the selfish conceits of her narcissistic boss are unnerving, making her a pain to work for, placing her in a fully subservient and demeaning role, yet the idea of having the freedom to work with designers, choosing their latest creations, and having them at your beck and call, as her boss is too busy and too recognizable to perform these duties herself, offers a kind of titillating luxury most of us will never know, flittering in and out of the high life, dropping off accessories, having access to often empty upscale apartments where she’s free to imagine herself in a parallel existence leading a life of pampered indulgence.  But the film is not about class difference, though in stark contrast, Maureen runs around in jeans, T-shirts and old sweaters, instead one of the visceral thrills she gets is secretly trying on her boss’s clothes, something she’s explicitly forbidden to do, but operating completely on her own, almost never running into her boss, she sets her own boundaries.  With occasional skype calls from a boyfriend abroad (Ty Olwin), who is consumed by a high tech security instillation in Oman, Maureen makes frequent visits to her sister Lara (Sigrid Bouaziz), who seems to keep her grounded.  When not shopping for Kyra, she spends her free time communing with the dead, hoping for a sign from her recently deceased twin brother, Lewis, as both share the same congenital heart condition, which caused his sudden death, and both are psychic mediums, having made a pact that the first one to die would send a recognizable sign.  This aspect of the film has sinister implications, especially when the wrong spirits show up, as they are often angry and incensed at finding themselves summoned by strangers, where the idea of wandering endlessly in the spirit world does not sound inviting.  Because she is a medium, however, she’s able to understand these mix-ups, a skill viewers may not share, leaving them perplexed by the cinematic trickery involved, where the baffling weirdness of ghosts onscreen is still relatively shocking in arthouse cinema. 

Assayas shared the Best Direction prize at Cannes with Romanian director Christian Mungiu for Graduation (Bacalaureat) (2015), two very different styles of film, yet both are eerily distinctive at tapping into modern era anxieties and discontent, where Maureen is not only trying to come to terms with her brother’s death, exposing herself to phantoms of the spirit world, but leads such a detached existence, disconnected from her own employer, always missing each other, instead leaving each other notes, rarely having any contact, she is also targeted by an unknown caller on her smartphone, all but contaminating an indispensable part of her existence, who seems intimately familiar with her every move, initially suspecting it was her brother from beyond the grave, but it leads to more menacing implications, as if someone is stalking her and watching her every move, where an unsettling relationship, of sorts, develops over a prolonged sequence of text messages that leads to a great deal of confusion and fear, feeling completely exposed, even ashamed, where there are dangerous forces on the loose.  This powerful sense of emptiness and loss follows her everywhere, which may be associated with her enveloping grief, but is further exacerbated by her entry into the supernatural, where all the forces align in painting a complex portrait of contemporary unease, becoming a meditation on loss, but also jealousy, identity, and desire, where Maureen loses all sense of herself.  One of the more bizarre sequences finds Maureen alone in Kyra’s apartment, as she is away on business, allowing her to try on various outfits, changing places with her employer, perhaps reminiscent of Jean Genet’s The Maids, yet the eerie music on the soundtrack is Marlene Dietrich singing a bleak Viennese folksong about how Death doesn’t differentiate, as it cuts down the rich and poor alike, Marlene Dietrich "Das Hobellied" 1952 (Feathers 2/2). - YouTube (2:02), which opens the door to darker, more ominous forces that creep ever closer, brilliantly conveyed by a series of unread texts unraveling in waves, that develop a more threatening tone with every new line, instantly filling her with dread, feeling exposed, as if she is on the precipice of the abyss.  With the phone itself becoming an instrument of horror, violence ensues, though not as one might suspect, as technology is a tool that seems to have robbed our souls of greater meaning in life, leaving us even more disconnected and alone, a vulnerable and precarious position, to be sure.  Caught in a labyrinth of fear, she makes her escape, scampering off to Oman, where the specifics of her detailed instructions out into the hinterlands lead her farther and farther away from any recognizable signs of civilization, where she may as well be in an altogether different universe, like a portal to the unknown (where there is probably no cellphone connection).  Maureen continually places herself in haunted space, contemplating her experience afterwards, though by the end whether she is liberated or not remains an open question, yet there are inevitably lingering doubts, larger existential questions that go unanswered, but viewers are likely to be caught off-guard while the film searches for answers about the unknown mysteries of the modern world, including a driving, often irrational need to fill a void of emptiness in our human existence.