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.

Nuns victimized by war

"All's well that end's well."

You may want to put that well-worn bromide aside after watching The Innocents, a drama about life in an austere Polish nunnery in 1945.

French director Anne Fontaine gives her movie an optimistic finale, but it goes against the grain of what has been an appropriately disturbing look at the lingering impacts of war.

Seen mostly through the eyes of a French doctor (Lou de Laage), The Innocents tells the story of nuns whose faith has been shaken by brutal war-time realities. Marauding Russian soldiers not only put Hitler's troops on the run; they raped most of the nuns, leaving many of them pregnant.

A few of these cloistered women had had worldly experiences prior to entering the convent; many were virgins whose commitment to being unsullied brides of Christ was a cornerstone of their lives.

The gifted Polish actress Agata Kulesza, last seen playing "Red" Wanda in Ida, portrays the Reverend Mother who runs the convent. The Reverend Mother worries that if word about the pregnancies leaks to the surrounding community, the convent's reputation will be irrevocably compromised.

Agata Buzek portrays the Reverend Mother's second in command, a woman had experience with men before entering the convent, and who seems more compassionate than the Reverend Mother about the suffering of her sisters.

Most of the movie involves the ways in which de Laage's character tries to help the nuns, who know little about giving birth -- or anything else for that matter. Some of the nuns are so unworldly, they don't even know that they're pregnant.

De Laage's Mathilde Beaulieu does not share the faith of the nuns, but empathizes with them as women in need of assistance. She's also having a somewhat perfunctory affair with a Jewish physician (Vincent Macaigne) who also has been stationed at the post-war Polish front. She eventually enlists his help in giving birth to the babies.

In deliberate and piercing fashion, Fontaine allows moral questions to emerge; the characters must grapple with them as best they can. There are no easy answers, and Fontaine doesn't try to manufacture any.

So back to my opening remarks. Though based on actual events, the movie offers an ending that feels too encouraging for a drama that has been so grimly focused -- or maybe the ending arrives too abruptly to feel like anything more than an add-on meant to discourage complete pessimism.

Whatever the reason, Fontaine's attempt provide a moment of redemption proves less convincing than her portrayal of the horrors that preceded it.

Those horrors serve as a necessary reminder that the terrors of war don't end when the shooting stops and that responsibility for dealing with them are burdens that many are forced to carry.