MCC favorite Olivier Assayas has a new film out—the French title is Doubles Vies (Double Lives). We were not able to see it at the New York Film Festival (especially sorry to have missed the Q&A that followed there), but thanks to the new branch office we did catch the screening arranged by the Boston Independent Film Festival at the legendary Brattle Theater.
As always, we’re not prepared to write properly about any film worth talking about on the basis of one screening—that would not only violate our “three viewings rule” (promised elaboration still forthcoming!) but would be especially problematic here, because, and surely this means something, we have never seen an Assayas film that we did not like more after seeing it a second time.
Nevertheless, herewith a few initial reactions. Nominally, Double Lives concerns the intersecting lives of three comfortable professionals (and a number of their well-drawn affiliates): the director of a respectable French publishing house (Guillaume Canet, outstanding in a restrained, subtle performance); his wife, a successful actor (Juliette Binoche, who utterly inhabits the most demanding role in the film); and their friend, a reputable but not household-name writer whose books invariably rely on diaphanously veiled events from his own private life (Vincent Macaigne, whose on-screen success with women should lift the spirits of scruffy novelists everywhere).
The movie is unfailingly enjoyable, sharp-witted and full of humor. And we are very much in Assayas-land, rich with no-easy-answers ruminations on the relationship between art and commerce, and the tensions between the way things were (for better and worse) and the way things will be, propelled by relentless technological change. In those contexts Double Lives has a lot to say—about things like the perilous future of publishing (the working title of the film was “e-book”), the ways that marketing algorithms steer people’s digital lives to content that soothingly sustains their prior beliefs, generational divides over the social-moral implications of such things, and, because it is French (it was accurately introduced at the Brattle as “the most French movie” you will ever see), lots of spectacular meals, stunning locations, and just an avalanche of très, très, civilized affairs (hence the title).
Which adds up to a happy Ebertian thumbs-up from us; but at this first viewing we did not feel riveted by or intensely emotionally engaged with Double Lives—a very high bar perhaps, but a standard that Assayas films routinely achieve. This may be in part because the movie is a lighter and more comedic affair than typical for the director (which can be seen as a welcome change of pace); additionally, it is just overflowing with dialogue, which can be challenging to fully process on a first go-round. And the sharp debates early on, about the future of publishing in a screen-saturated, toddler-attention-span, click-bait civilization rehearse arguments well, but come across as literal and even lecture-y. But Double Lives gains real depth and impressive momentum as it increasingly nests these concerns in the context of its characters’ relationships and life choices.
Other abundant strengths linger in the mind—a representative sampling: we were especially impressed with the way that all of these characters talked sharply and honestly with each other while unquestionably remaining friends—these are the conversations in life worth having (though admittedly there is also an important subtext regarding the relative merits of talking obliquely and leaving some things unsaid, if implicitly understood.) And as an unexpected treat, two essentially running gags are hilarious, one on how to properly describe Binoche’s TV show, the other regarding the ethics of substituting The White Ribbon for Star Wars (which pretty much boils down to a much more risqué version of this). But most impressive is the way that Assayas can shift effortlessly from a joke like that to one character’s moving, pitch-perfect reference to his affinity with the desolate pastor in Bergman’s Winter Light.
Double Lives is still playing the film-festival circuit, and will not be in general release in the U.S. until 2019. In planning ahead note that us simple Americans have been saddled with the title “Non-Fiction,” which is itself a corruption of “Auto-Fiction,” a key theme of the movie and a phrase repeated throughout. (What is auto-fiction? Macainge’s writing technique, deployed by authors throughout history—and previously engaged, also to comic effect, in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry.)
Olivier Assayas