FILM REVIEW: NON-FICTION

The digital era has increasingly altered traditional ways of creating art, causing a schism between traditionalists and the newer generation of artists. This conflict between the old and the new is explored in Olivier Assayas’ film Non-Fiction (2018), a deft and clever relationship comedy-drama about a group of friends working in the publishing industry. As a filmmaker, Olivier Assayas has been very eclectic, making everything from French New Wave inspired art films like Irma Vep and Demon Lover to epic political thrillers like Carlos. Now, with Non-Fiction, Assayas is paying homage to Eric Rohmer’s comedy of manners, but updating it for the digital age.

Non-Fiction is the story of a struggling writer (Léonard Spiegel, played by Vincent Macaigne) and his strained relationship with his publisher and friend (Alain Danielson, played by Guillaume Canet).  Vincent and Alain are locked in a power struggle about the publication of his latest novel Full Stop, which is intensified by Vincent’s affair with Alain’s wife Selena (Juliette Binoche), who plays a fictional version of herself as a famous aging actress. In the meantime, Vincent is having relationship problems with his own wife Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), who suspects Vincent of having an affair, and Alain is also having an affair with Laure (Christa Théret), a young woman he hires to help bring his publishing company into the digital era.

This complicated series of extra-marital affairs never gets bogged down into soap operatic melodrama. Rather, like the films of Rohmer, Non-Fiction is a bitingly funny exploration of the intricate power dynamics between men and women in and out of love. On this level alone, Non-Fiction succeeds as a realistic portrayal of the complex emotions that accompany every marriage, and the bonds that both threaten to tear relationships apart and bind them together even stronger. 

Unlike an American film, Assayas doesn’t explore infidelity from a purely moral perspective. Instead, Assayas examines how emotions between men and women change over time, and how this can lead them to seek other partners to satisfy their needs. By the end of the film, there is no definitive resolution for the infidelities of the main characters; instead, just like in the real world, things are left unresolved and messy.

As the title itself suggests, Non-Fiction is also about the tenuous nature of truth in the publishing industry. Vincent writes novels that he categorizes as fiction, but at the same time they are clearly autobiographical in nature, as he writes characters and situations that are based of his own convoluted personal life. Also, the relevance of the novel as a written form in the modern era is challenged throughout the film by Laure. She continuously encourages Alain to steer away from publishing novels like the ones which Vincent writes, and focus more on monetizing online forms of writing, such as blogs and content for E-books.

With Non-Fiction, Assayas is asking us to re-evaluate monetary success as an end-all. Should Alain sell out his publishing company to an E-commerce company which will transform it into the digital future which Laure revealed to him, or keep publishing his friend Vincent’s novels? In an era in which the definition of what constitutes literature is constantly changing as a result of digitization and the new demands of E-commerce, how can we as a society preserve traditional novels as an art form?

Alain must choose between cashing in his company’s work to the unnamed tech giant (as symbolized by his extra-marital affair with the digital guru Laure), or preserving his personal relationships with his wife Selena and his friend Vincent. Assayas doesn’t offer an absolute resolution to this dilemma, or any neatly tied up conclusions to Non-Fiction’s various plot strands. Instead, through the story of his characters and their complicated love lives, Assayas suggests that the only thing that does remain constant in the rapidly changing digital era is the genuine love between couples and friends.