At first glance, Non-Fiction (which opens this weekend at the Music Box) might appear to be a minor effort from French writer-director Olivier Assayas. The film is dialogue-driven, as opposed to advancing a remarkable visual aesthetic, and the conversations seem to spell out the ideas Assayas wants to communicate. Practically every scene contains some exchange about the nature of mass media in the 21st century, and while these exchanges are eloquent, even provocative, some viewers might find them a little too clear-cut. Assayas’s characters explicitly debate the merits of reading e-books versus traditional print, binge-watching TV shows versus going to the movies, and learning about writers via autobiographical fiction versus news reports of their personal behavior. It’s as though Assayas—who’s explored these themes before in such films as Late August, Early September (1998), Demonlover (2002), and Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)—simply wanted to give expression to his conflicted feelings on postmodern life, storytelling be damned.
The film takes place in London in the early 1980s. Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne, the daughter of actress Tilda Swinton, who also appears here) is a film school student in her early 20s working on a social-realist drama for her final project. As in her 2013 feature Exhibition, Hogg realizes the art world in knowing detail, though it essentially exists as the backdrop for an interpersonal story about Julie’s romance with an older man named Anthony (Tom Burke) who works for the Foreign Office. Anthony is fussy, disdainful, and priggish, but he’s also witty and knows a lot about art (the movie takes its title from a Fragonard painting he takes her to admire at a museum); some of the more important conversations Hogg dramatizes concern the properties of cinema and other artistic media. Julie quickly becomes in thrall to Anthony, not just drinking in his assessments of art, but following him to every social event he wishes to attend. The affair appears somewhat one-sided, with Julie seeming Anthony’s protégé as much as his lover. An ever-understated dramatist, Hogg doesn’t make this aspect of the relationship the film’s focal point; she makes clear how Julie’s curiosity and determination as a budding filmmaker carries over to her private life. Still, something eerie floats just beneath the surface of The Souvenir, hinting at the grand revelation to come.
Directed by Olivier Assayas. In French with subtitles. R, 108 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6607, musicboxtheatre.com, $9-$11.
The Souvenir ★★★★ Directed by Joanna Hogg. R, 119 min. Century Centre Cinema, 2828 N. Clark, 773-248-7759, landmarktheatres.com, $10-$12.50.
