Decep­tion – first-look review

This new film by the French film­mak­er Arnaud Desplechin makes a fair­ly suc­cess­ful attempt at redeem­ing the image of the time-hon­oured, trouser-drop­ping phi­lan­der­er. It pos­es the con­tro­ver­sial ques­tion, is it pos­si­ble to empathise with an unre­pen­tant ser­i­al adul­ter­er? It then goes on to ask, if the answer to the first ques­tion is yes, would you then change your mind when you realised that his adul­tery was feed­ing his cre­ative impuls­es as an author?

Per­haps this slip­pery and emo­tion­al­ly forth­right film is not as sim­ple as all that, instead play­ing a lot like a dis­sec­tion on the dif­fer­ent modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and expres­sion that arise with­in the pri­vate con­fines of an illic­it affair. There’s very lit­tle time spent explor­ing the trau­ma expe­ri­enced by the vic­tims of adul­tery, almost as if it is some­thing peo­ple should expect and take on – a nat­ur­al part of life. And much of the film looks at the idea that being more instinc­tu­al and self­ish when it comes to mat­ters of the heart can ush­er in pos­i­tiv­i­ty, clar­i­ty, joy and even poetry.

The gor­geous script from Desplechin and Julie Peyr is pulled from Philip Roth’s enig­mat­i­cal­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 1990 nov­el about a cou­ple dis­sect­ing their love­less mar­riage, yet this film shifts the focus side­ways to tell of fifty-some­thing Amer­i­can expat author Philip (Denis Poda­ly­dès) and his intel­lec­tu­al­ly and erot­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing affair with bored British house­wife played by Léa Seydoux.

Per­haps as a result of Covid-19 and lim­i­ta­tions when it comes to film­ing and stag­ing, the whole of Decep­tion plays out as a rounde­lay of one-on-one dia­logues, often in sin­gle room, occa­sion­al­ly over the phone. Inti­ma­cy and pri­va­cy are key themes, as Desplechin is inter­est­ed in how this enclosed dra­mat­ic dynam­ic allows peo­ple to open up, embrace their inhi­bi­tions and explore the recess­es of their soul. The dia­logue shared by Philip and Seydoux’s char­ac­ter is one of total emo­tion­al open­ness, almost as if it’s an exer­cise in time trav­el­ling to the point where the stric­tures of con­ven­tion­al love and mar­riage have placed a sub­tle stran­gle­hold on what can and can’t be said and done.

While this lengthy and intense tryst acts as the back­bone to the sto­ry, Desplechin paints a broad­er char­ac­ter por­trait of Philip by bring­ing var­i­ous satel­lite rela­tion­ships, one with a young stu­dent who he may have dri­ven to a men­tal break­down, and – most mov­ing­ly – anoth­er with an old­er woman in remis­sion from can­cer (played by the great Emmanuelle Devos) in a New York hos­pi­tal. The film achieves an almost Rorschach-lev­el of ambi­gu­i­ty when it comes to the task of how we judge Philip, as some will see him as a life-destroy­ing, self-serv­ing mon­ster, while oth­ers will see an artist rest­less­ly chas­ing his muse while attempt­ing to be as diplo­mat­ic and real­is­tic as pos­si­ble when it comes to how these con­nec­tions are formed, and how they’re even­tu­al­ly bro­ken. Desplechin’s mas­tery comes in his shrewd deci­sion to not reveal his own hand.