Olivier Assayas

NON-FICTION: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life

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Guillaume Canet (left) and Vincent Macaigne in NON-FICTION

I finally got around to watching writer-director Olivier Assayas’ Non-Fiction. I had been eager to see it because I generally find the French actor Vincent Macaigne hilarious, and I will pretty much watch Juliette Binoche in anything. My conclusion: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life, and I am over his films.

Non-Fiction is a comedy of manners that revolves around the once-successful novelist Leonard, whose books are very lightly disguised re-tellings of his own sordid romantic life, and Leonard’s publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet). Alain is married to Selena (Juliette Binoche), an actress in TV cop shows. Everybody sleeps with somebody else’s partner, and everyone wrings their hands over e-books, audio books, blogs and the impending death of the book industry. That’s about it. None of it is engaging.

In 2006, Assayas, a veteran screenwriter, wrote and directed an okay segment (the one with Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress pining for her drug dealer) in the delightful anthology Paris, je t’aime. He followed it in 2008 with the fine family drama Summer Hours. And then, in 2011, he did the excellent true crime mini-series Carlos. This was a promising start, and he developed a fan base of admiring critics.

But since then, Assayas has wasted brilliant performances by Binoche and Kristen Stewart in the Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper – two muddled messes that masquerade as cinema. And now, the off-putting Non-Fiction. I am over this guy.

SPOILER: There is one funny moment in Non-Fiction, which I shall now spoil for you, so you won’t need to watch the movie. In the last quarter of the film, the characters decide to publish an audio book read by a celebrity, and they aspire to get Juliette Binoche (who is, of course, in this scene playing her character). I’ll concede that this is a genuinely witty moment, if self-referential.

Non-Fiction is now streaming on Amazon and other platforms.

PERSONAL SHOPPER: Kristin Stewart can’t save this mess

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PERSONAL SHOPPER
PERSONAL SHOPPER

Kristen Stewart’s brilliant performance isn’t enough to save Olivier Assaya’s murky French drama Personal Shopper.  Stewart plays a woman who is working as a personal shopper for an obnoxious celebrity, but she really identifies as a medium. She is grieving her twin brother, who died a few months before. He was also a medium, and the two had resolved that the first to die would contact the survivor from Beyond. As Personal Shopper opens, she is walking around her brother’s house and muttering his name without turning on any lights.  Does she find him?  Does she find something even scarier?  Do we care?

Assayas takes Personal Shopper bouncing along between movie genres – from Ghost Story to a moment of Horror, then to Mystery Thriller and finally Ghost Story again. Some critics have credited him with a highly original approach to an exploration of grief.  But, no, Personal Shopper is just a mess.  Grief has shocked the main character into a malaise, but Personal Shopper keeps changing its focus to her fears and her sexuality.  If you want to see a good movie about grief, try Manchester by the Sea, Five Nights in Maine or Rabbit Hole.

Near the beginning of Personal Shopper, there’s some very clumsy exposition – as if a character were reading from the Wikipedia page on spiritualism.  The big mystery in Personal Shopper is who is sending her texts, and that question is never resolved. I’m usually OK with ambiguous movie endings, but this would have bothered me if I had cared.

Nonetheless, Kristin Stewart is superb.  Stewart seems completely natural when her character feels deep terror, grief or fascination  and also when her emotions are stunted or repressed and her affect is blunted. There’s a moment of auto-eroticism that is very, well, erotic.  Stewart holds our attention in every scene.  She’s so damned watchable that we always want to know what her character is thinking and about to do.

Stewart may be good, but Personal Shopper is not worth 105 minutes of anyone’s life.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: a muddled mess

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Man, what a disappointment! Somehow the Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). But it’s just a muddled mess.

Binoche plays a Margot Channing-aged actress, and Stewart plays her personal assistant. The star is about to take the older woman role in a play that launched her career (in a younger role to be played by the star of a Hollywood comic book movie). As the movie begins, the play’s author dies and the Binoche character must deal with the loss of her mentor. She’s also going through a difficult divorce and fending off the advances of a onetime co-star, and generally being pretty difficult amid her midlife crisis. None of this interesting and some of the story is confusing to boot.

The only time that Clouds of Sils Maria perks up is when Chloë Grace Moretz shows up as the younger actress, a train wreck who is the epitome of paparazzi-bait . (Kudos to Kristen Stewart – the Moretz role is close enough to Stewart’s real life to demonstrate that Stewart doesn’t take herself too seriously.) It’s a funny role and Moretz nails it.

Oddly, Clouds of Sils Maria is almost entirely in English (for Kristen Stewart?), and Binoche just isn’t as enthralling as she usually is. It’s also odd that a French celebrity would hire a non-French speaking personal assistant for travel in French-speaking country – what’s up with this?

I blame director Olivier Assayas. I really liked Assayas’ miniseries Carlos , but he now has engineered three clunker features in a row (Summer Hours, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria)., so I’ll have to persuaded to see his next project.

DVD of the Week: Carlos

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The Criterion Collection has released its DVD of Carlos, Olivier Assayas’  5 1/2 hour miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal.  Carlos had played in three-parts on the Sundance Channel – and it’s really good!

Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians.  It turns out that he is way smarter and more nervy than the other dippy wannabe terrorists, so he rises to lead his own crew.  At first he prudently tries to remain clandestine, but he inadvertently gains some celebrity and LOVES IT.  After his first exposure in the media, he self-consciously dons a Che Guevara beret for his next adventure.  Soon he is a legend in his own mind.  Finally, he learns what happens when he becomes too hot for anyone to shield.

The action sweeps between atrocities in Paris and Vienna, a terrorist training camp in Aden, secret bases in Berlin and Budapest.  Along the way, we meet European goofball radical posers and smarmy Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan intelligence officers.  We see dynamite action scenes as Carlos must pull off escapes and attacks in compressed time.

Carlos is a  star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who plays Carlos and has to carry almost every scene.  Ramirez perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution.  Ramirez plays a few scenes in the nude, with Carlos at first admiring his own beefy body and later lolling about with a pot belly.

Carlos is a French film, but is mostly in English; there are subtitled scenes with French, Spanish and Arabic dialogue.

Set your TiVo for Carlos

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The Sundance Channel is broadcasting Olivier Assayas’ 5 1/2 hour miniseries Carlos again on February 23.  Don’t miss this miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians.  It turns out that he is way smarter and more nervy than the other dippy wannabe terrorists, so he rises to lead his own crew.  At first he prudently tries to remain clandestine, but he inadvertently gains some celebrity, and he LOVES IT.  After his first exposure in the media, he self-consciously dons a Che Guevara beret for his next adventure.  Soon he is a legend in his own mind.  Finally, he learns what happens when he becomes too hot for anyone to shield.

The action sweeps between atrocities in Paris and Vienna, a terrorist training camp in Aden, secret bases in Berlin and Budapest.  Along the way, we meet European goofball radical posers and smarmy Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan intelligence officers.  We see dynamite action scenes as Carlos must pull off escapes and attacks in compressed time.

Carlos is a  star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who plays Carlos and has to carry almost every scene.  Ramirez perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution.  Ramirez plays a few scenes in the nude, with Carlos at first admiring his own beefy body and later lolling about with a pot belly.

Carlos is a French film, but is mostly in English; there are subtitled scenes with French, Spanish and Arabic dialogue.

Carlos has also been released in a 2 hour 45 minute version on Pay Per View.  I strongly recommend the full length version on the Sundance Channel.

Carlos

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I just finished watching the three-part Carlos on the Sundance Channel, Olivier Assayas’  5 1/2 hour miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal – and it’s really good.

Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians.  It turns out that he is way smarter and more nervy than the other dippy wannabe terrorists, so he rises to lead his own crew.  At first he prudently tries to remain clandestine, but he inadvertently gains some celebrity and LOVES IT.  After his first exposure in the media, he self-consciously dons a Che Guevara beret for his next adventure.  Soon he is a legend in his own mind.  Finally, he learns what happens when he becomes too hot for anyone to shield.

The action sweeps between atrocities in Paris and Vienna, a terrorist training camp in Aden, secret bases in Berlin and Budapest.  Along the way, we meet European goofball radical posers and smarmy Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan intelligence officers.  We see dynamite action scenes as Carlos must pull off escapes and attacks in compressed time.

Carlos is a  star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who plays Carlos and has to carry almost every scene.  Ramirez perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution.  Ramirez plays a few scenes in the nude, with Carlos at first admiring his own beefy body and later lolling about with a pot belly.

Carlos is a French film, but is mostly in English; there are subtitled scenes with French, Spanish and Arabic dialogue.

Carlos has also been released in a 2 hour 45 minute version on Pay Per View.  I strongly recommend waiting for the DVD release of the full length version (or watching for it to pop up again on Sundance Channel).