Non-Fiction (Doubles vies)
***Opening Night Film***
Directed by Olivier Assayas
France | 2018 | Fiction | 108 min
French w/ English subtitles
Film Source: Sundance Selects/ IFC
Sponsors: 05401
The latest film from French auteur Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper; Clouds of Sils Maria) is a delightfully witty sex comedy set in the Parisian publishing world. Léonard (Vincent Macaigne) is a novelist with a troublesome habit of writing barely disguised fiction that’s uncomfortably close to the real lives of his friends and lovers. When his longtime editor, Alain (Guillaume Canet), refuses to publish his latest book, it sends Léonard into a self-destructive melancholy that threatens to expose his relationship with Alain’s wife (the always superb Juliette Binoche), with whom he’s been having a long-term affair. But beneath the film’s breezy exterior, Assayas probes salient questions about perceptions of authenticity in fiction and real life in the digital age. Shot on Super 16mm film, Non-Fiction provides potent commentary about life in the post-digital world and how we consume information and relate to one another in the era of social media and e-devices. ~LB