If the French did not exist, they would definitely be worth inventing: no one else knows how to … live like that. At least on the screen. Sensual, light, subtle, ironic, simple. For real. Transmitting the banality of everyday conversations so vividly that you begin to recognize yourself in them. Allowing viewers to approach their wrinkles and imperfections at an unthinkably close distance. This – the effect of proximity – permeates the new film by Olivier Assayas, a chamber dramedy about betrayals and … the future of the publishing business.
To be fair, the original title of the film, of course, translates as “Double Lives”. Everyone is leading them here: the successful Parisian publisher Allen (Guillaume Canet), a conservative, smart and seemingly decent family man, his wife Celeste (Juliette Binoche), a theater actress tired of her role in a police series, their longtime friend Leonard, an eternally rumpled novelist of an average hand , who is able in his books to describe only what happens to him in reality (including romantic adventures with those who are easy to recognize on the pages of books), and many, many others.
All of them are interconnected by a thin but strong web of attraction, omissions, vague suspicions and outright disagreements. Two hours of screen time they meet, eat – in each other’s living rooms and crowded French bistros, play with children, make love and argue: what is the future – for a paper book or a number? Does the advent of the era of posts and tweets mean the death of a writer in the classical sense of the word? How can a book author compete in terms of popularity with his own blog? Does a writer have the right to populate the pages of his books with real people, forcing the latter, in fact, to lead a “double life”?
How to survive in a rapidly changing world? How to get out of an existential crisis?
And it’s endlessly interesting to watch. It would seem where we are and where the Parisian publishing business is, but the key word in the title “Double Life” is, of course, the second word: life here pulsates and overflows. The characters are recognizable, confused and sometimes ridiculous, in the dialogues, with the general satirical tone of the picture, not a single false word, not a single wrong intonation, problems … yes, in general, all the same that each of us has.
How to survive in a rapidly changing world. How to get out of the existential crisis that inevitably overtakes each of us. How, if you are over forty, to find a common language with the representatives of the next generation – those who are covered in tattoos, did not watch Bergman, but firmly believe in the digital future.
And what to do when you understand: the one who is nearby led a double life for years, and all this time you managed not to notice it.
Three films to complete the picture
- Sils-Maria (2014). Even more intimate and subtle drama of the same Assayas with Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in the lead roles. A story about acting, acceptance of age and a past that sooner or later makes itself felt.
- “The Ideal Family” (Paolo Genovese, 2012). The tragicomedy directed by the acclaimed “Perfect Strangers” is definitely the case when the less you know about the film, the more interesting it is to watch. We confine ourselves to the fact that the heroes here also lead a double life. The main thing is not to confuse the film with the American comedy of 2011.
- “She” (Spike Jonze, 2013). American drama about loneliness and relationships in the age of artificial intelligence. It would seem that such a plot twist does not threaten the heroes of “Double Life”, but in general the prospect of such a future cannot but frighten.