Watching inhabitants of the publishing world

Non-Fiction examines life within a narrow yet revealing frame.

About a quarter of the way through director Olivier Assayas‘s Non-Fiction, my wife turned to me and whispered, "I can't stand these people." Her abhorrence seemed entirely justified.

Assayas's dive into the besieged world of book publishing -- complete with copious conversations about the digital onslaught that threatens the literary soul -- focuses on narcissistic intellectuals who have affairs as casually as the rest of us might have lunch and who seem to hide behind veils of self-assured posturing. Among this group, it's not easy to separate conviction from self-interest.

And yet...

There's an undeniable sense of life in Non-Fiction along with fine performances in a story that begins when the editor of a publishing house (Guillaume Canet) rejects the work of one of his authors (Vincent Macaigne).

Assayas then opens the world he wishes to explore, allowing his characters to become more stressed and more revealed.

Canet's Alain is married to an actress (Juliette Binoche) who has been working in a popular television crime series. Macaigne's Leonard's wife, Valerie (Nora Hamzawi), has committed herself to politics, working for a left-leaning politician. She responds cruelly when Leonard sinks into depression.

She approaches life with staunch practicality that leaves little room for compassion toward those around her and also differentiates her from a crowd that's likely to spend hours talking about e-books, the impact of digital media, the way we perceive the world, and whether blogs are worthy of attention from literary-minded readers.

Leonard's so-called "auto-fiction" comes under fire. Does it exploit the lives of those with whom he associates, particularly the women with whom he's had affairs? And, yes, bed-hopping may have something to do with various decisions that are made. We begin to suspect pettiness lies beneath what sometimes are expressed as matters of principle.

I couldn't begin to tell you whether Assayas cares a fig about the way the digital world seems to be gobbling up everything, changing long-standing practices and assumptions. And I'm not entirely sure these verbally dexterous characters are doing anything more than engaging in a rarefied form of shop talk about the business they happen to inhabit.

Even-keeled Alain has an affair with a young woman (Christa Theret) who has been hired to help shove his company into the digital age and who seems to be a model for some new kind of human being. She’s a pillar of technical pragmatism.

Binoche's character worries that her TV work amounts to a betrayal of her artistry. Leonard doesn't seem entirely convinced of his talent, admitting that he can't write without pillaging his own life and the lives of those who happened to wander into it.

Only Hamzawi's Valeria seems to have her feet on the ground, but you wouldn't want to take her as a role model either.

So what's the takeaway from all this? I'd say the movie has something to do with exposing the narrowness of preoccupied lives. It's not the digital world that threatens Assayas's characters; it's their insistence on using their considerable intellectual skills to create the illusion that they might actually know what they're doing.

So, like my wife, you may not like these folks, but also like her, you’ll probably stay interested in this astutely cut slice of Parisian life.

A father searches for his kidnapped son

If Liam Neeson hadn't already starred in movies about persistent, enraged fathers trying to rescue their kidnapped offspring, the French movie My Son might have had more kick. Writer/director Christian Carion tells the story of a dad (Guillaume Canet) who tries to find his kidnapped son (Lino Papa). To carry out his search, Canet's Julien, who mostly has been an absentee father to the boy, must return to the French countryside where his former wife Marie (Melanie Laurent) has taken up with a new man (Olivier de Benoist). The hot-headed Julien quickly gets crosswise with Benoist's Gregoire, whom he suspects of having kidnapped the troubled boy as a twisted way of ensuring a problem-free marriage to Marie. Carion cranks up the tension as Julien finds himself moving through a variety of situations that call upon him to put his violent impulses to use. In the most notable of these, Julien uses a blow torch to induce an accomplice in the kidnapping to talk. Carion creates suspense but discards various important characters without explanation and leaves us with a bunch of questions about what we've just witnessed. Also missing: the kind of probing that would have turned My Son into a real exploration of a guilt-ridden dad who knows little about the son for whom he's searching.

The story of a stormy relationship

Cezanne et Moi tells the story of the friendship between Paul Cezanne and Emile Zola.

Sometimes expectation becomes the enemy of enjoyment. That partly explains why I found Cezanne et Moi, the story of the stormy friendship between artist Paul Cezanne and novelist Emile Zola disappointing.

But my initial enthusiasm about the prospect of seeing a movie about an artist whose studio and home I visited in Aix-en-Provence isn't the only reason that Cezanne et Moi proved a letdown.

The rub: The movie doesn't have enough to say about either Cezanne's art or Zola's writing.

Skipping back and forth in time, director Daniele Thompson depicts a relationship in which Zola gains fame and fortune and Cezanne suffers from a lack of recognition. Although their fates were different, neither man achieved much by way of contentment.

Cezanne comes across as a typical outsider, a painter who's contemptuous of the success of other artists. He can behave in ways that turn him into the sort of fellow people might cross the street to avoid.

Zola, on the other hand, acquires money, a home in Paris and social status. But in this telling, he also knows that his comfortable life is at odds with the social outlook expressed in his writing. He frets about being a hypocrite.

Cezanne and Zola were childhood friends in Aix-en-Provence, but as the two matured, their social positions reversed. Usually broke, Cezanne struggled to survive on a small allowance from his disapproving family. Zola, who didn't hail from a family with money, found material success.

Zola's novel, L'oeuvre became the occasion for a major split between the two men because it depicted details of Cezanne's life. Cezanne felt betrayed.

Guillaume Canet plays Zola as an emotionally steady fellow who loans Cezanne money and mostly endures the painter's insults. Guillaume Gallienne has the showier role as an artist of explosive temperament.

Women are less important to the story, but not inconsequential. Alice Pol portrays Zola's wife, Alexandrine, a woman with whom Cezanne once had an affair. Alexandrine was a seamstress and maybe a prostitute whose marriage to Zola moved her up the social ladder. Deborah Francois portrays Cezanne's mistress.

All of this would have been fine had Thompson done more to explore the work of either man. She particularly shortchanges Cezanne, offering too little by way of illumination about how he viewed his work.

Safe to say that Cezanne has eclipsed Zola in terms of reputation, so a modest suggestion: A trip to a museum where you can view Cezanne's art might prove more rewarding than this scattered, intermittently compelling drama.