After co-writing a film with Roman Polanski (what’s the
French word for ‘oof’?), writer/director Olivier Assayas has returned to his
French-language roots with a look at the modern-day publishing industry. Yes,
this means that we’re still in ‘writer porn’ mode from the last review,
although I’d argue that this makes for something far more substantive than Vita
& Virginia. The reason why I specified ‘porn’ to describe it is that it
functions in a similar fashion; art it may be, but substantial it is not. Where
that film ultimately faffed around with flowery prose, making half-statements
about the worth of such wording but never really getting to the heart of
anything, this film goes beyond just the philosophy of writing: It’s
also about the logistics of writing in the Internet age.
