Although the English title of this film does make sense as a reference to the film’s narrative, I prefer the French title which is more subtle and has more referents in its translation as ‘Double Lives’. This is another Olivier Assayas film which delves into formal questions about film, narrative, narration etc. and does so by exploring the behaviour of those involved in writing and producing ‘texts’. In this case the whole discussion is then worked into a familiar genre narrative of extra-marital affairs. Assayas has plenty of form in this area. The most recent film of his that I spent time thinking about was Clouds of Sils Maria (France 2014) in which Kristen Stewart plays the personal assistant to a moody star film actor played by Juliette Binoche. Much earlier in his career Assayas made Irma Vepp (France 1996) in which Maggie Cheung, playing herself, has a tough time making a film with a director played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. Assayas later married Ms Cheung. Léaud himself played in several films directed by François Truffaut including one in which Truffaut appeared as a director making a film – La nuite américaine (France 1973). It should be clear from all of this that we are in the rarefied world of the mise en abîme – the story within a story and a blurring of identities. Given that Doubles vies has a starry cast there is also likely to be a mismatch of expectations in which audiences looking forward to an entertaining marital comedy instead get a great deal of blather about the onslaught of digitalisation. One IMDb user calls it a “mediocre Ted Talk”. I wouldn’t go that far but it’s not a totally inaccurate analysis.
Guillaume Canet, who has often played action roles, is here cast as Alain, the head of a small but prestigious publishing house. He is married to Selena (Juliette Binoche), a celebrated stage actor who has become successful as the star of a TV series (a cop show of some kind). At the start of the narrative, Alain is in the process of deciding whether to publish the next novel of his friend Léonard (Vincent Macaigne). It isn’t clear at this point whether Alain knows that Léonard is having an affair with Selena. Alain himself is busy with his hot (in the industry sense) new colleague Laure (Christa Théret), his ‘Head of Digitalisation’. This extends into a physical relationship. Despite both having plenty to do, Alain and Selena also have a child who is seen occasionally with his nanny. There are two central themes in the film. One is how and when the analogue publishing industry will be forced to become yet another predominantly digital media industry. This is an industrial question about how publishers will organise their output, what staff they will need and how they will develop relationships with writers. It is also about something less tangible about prestige and high art credibility. Can an e-book ever have the cultural cachet of a well-bound and printed book? The other theme is around the ethics and credibility attached to ‘autofiction’, the form of literature defined as autobiographical fiction. The rise of this form in recent years has been more pronounced in French literature than in most other national literary cultures.
Léonard’s novels are seen as autofiction which means that he is writing about his affair with Selena. Can he really expect that Alain and his other friends won’t work out that his lover in the novel is Selena? Léonard also has a partner, Valérie (Nora Hamzawi) and she is busy being the media ‘minder’ for a politician who predictably drives her crazy. I watched the whole film but I admit that at times I did find it wearisome. The discourse about digitalisation is not particularly new or clever (admittedly the film is two years old). I think Juliette Binoche is wasted and I have a real problem with Vincent Macaigne. I’m sure he is a nice guy but I can’t see women falling for him as they do in several recent French films. I obviously don’t understand romance in France but it is odd that Macaigne seems to play similar buffoonish characters in several films. The only one of the characters in Doubles vies I could bear to spend time with would be Valérie. That said the dialogue in the film is witty and if you like this kind of French marital comedy this is a well-made example.
Doubles vies is currently streaming on MUBI.
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