Non-Fic­tion

Way, way back in 1996, French direc­tor Olivi­er Assayas made a film about the film indus­try called Irma Vep. It might be best described as a sin­cere satire, in that it gen­tly mocked the insti­tu­tion­alised dou­ble-speak and the fop­pish ten­den­cies of high­fa­lutin artists rail­ing against The Sys­tem, but was also dead­ly seri­ous in its mis­sion to reaf­firm cinema’s vaunt­ed sta­tus as The Sev­enth Art.

Non-Fic­tion takes us from movies to nov­els, this time zero­ing in on the inher­ent nar­cis­sism of those who write about and, by exten­sion, earn filthy lucre from the gory details of their pri­vate life. It, too, adopts a com­ic frame­work, but inside is an earnest inqui­si­tion into how phys­i­cal books are being nudged into the cul­tur­al dol­drums, main­ly due to the rise of what Assayas sees as ephemer­al dig­i­tal alternatives.

The film is also inter­est­ed the ways that new books are aggres­sive­ly mar­ket­ed and tracked, as well as how (usu­al­ly) very young, dig­i­tal­ly-savvy upstarts are now run­ning the asy­lum. It is high­ly crit­i­cal of this domain, but every­one has their moment in Assayas’ crosshairs: the slimy back-room oper­a­tors and the over-sen­si­tive authors who just want to wank onto a page and call it art, all the while remain­ing unshack­led from any dis­mal com­mer­cial con­cerns. Until it’s time to be paid. And as it turns out, every­one is fuck­ing every­one else, so this is a pub­lish­ing indus­try satire as bac­cha­na­lian orgy. But in a very gen­teel, French, non-stick kin­da way.

Léonard (Vin­cent Macaigne), an hir­sute lit­tle troll, is a nov­el­ist who is hap­py to write what he knows. And what he knows are scur­rilous details regard­ing the bed­room antics of minor celebri­ties, all pre­sent­ed on the page in thin­ly-veiled coun­ter­parts. He’s in a rela­tion­ship with Valérie (Nora Hamza­wi), who steals the film as a left-wing politi­co who is unable to feign inter­est in her partner’s career nosedive.

We open on a lunch meet­ing at a bustling brasserie, where avun­cu­lar lit­er­ary edi­tor Alain (Guil­laume Canet) tells Léonard that his new man­u­script isn’t up to snuff, send­ing the already on-edge author into a tail­spin of anx­i­ety and depres­sion. Mean­while, Alain heads home to his schlock TV actor wife Sele­na (Juli­ette Binoche), who is becom­ing bored of her type­cast­ing as a hard-ass counter ter­ror­ism agent, but is def­i­nite­ly able to trade bon mots with her flounc­ing hub­by, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to Léonard’s manuscript.

It’s almost as if she has some deep­er rela­tion­ship with the schlub­by word­smith, one that her hus­band is unable to see even though it’s laid bare on the page and tart­ed up as what is referred to in the pejo­ra­tive as ​“auto-fic­tion”. For every scene of domes­tic intrigue, Assayas makes sure to add a large chunk of quick-fire media analy­sis pre­sent­ed as Chablis-fuelled din­ner table ban­ter. It’s some­times hard to believe that nor­mal, mid­dle class peo­ple would get into a shout­ing match over the rise of E‑books, but there you go.

Some have crit­i­cised Non-Fic­tion for being too arch and cyn­i­cal, and there are def­i­nite­ly moments where you can almost feel the opin­ion­at­ed direc­tor hov­er­ing just off cam­era, want­i­ng to put his intel­lec­tu­al oar right into the frame. But it’s fizzy and light, loaded with zingers and also over­flow­ing with a pal­pa­ble air of melan­choly at the slow but steady demise of glo­ri­ous tac­tile media.