Non-Fiction (Doubles vies)
Friday, Jun 14, 2019 8:30 PM
"At one point in the delightfully head-spinning comedy Non-Fiction a character declares, for everything to stay the same, everything must change. The line is a direct quotation from The Leopard, Luchino Visconti's magnificent 1963 film about an aristocratic family facing the end of an era. Non-Fiction isn't quite so epic. It's a modern-day talk fest of a sort that owes less to Visconti than it does to the great French filmmaker Eric Rohmer. But its characters, all privileged members of Paris's cultural elite, are just as obsessed with the inevitability of change - specifically, the rise of digital technology and how it's reshaping their media landscape. That may not sound like the most scintillating subject for a feature film. But the writer-director, Olivier Assayas, has a knack for turning abstract ideas into stimulating cinema. He and his wonderful actors give every conversation an irresistibly seductive pull." Justin Chang, NPR.