Deception (2021)
(Tromperie)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 105m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
An American Jewish author records his intimate conversations with a married English woman in a notebook, which he later publishes as a thinly disguised fiction, under the title, 'Deception'.
Review:
Far more than a filming of Philip Roth's 1990 novel of the same name, Desplechin's wry chamber piece, as exquisitely made as a Swiss watch, is a meditation around the central love story that privileges the woman's feelings over the author's, and what a performance Seydoux's is. More controversially, perhaps, it rehabilitates Roth himself who, by all accounts and in a way Desplechin makes clear, was an inveterate womaniser for whom when you were done, you were done, as Claire Bloom learnt to her cost. Here Grinberg plays the role of the hapless wife and it is the only time we see Roth as a dealer in blatant untruths; elsewhere he is tender, thoughtful, and interested, even in his exes. The very fact that Seydoux and Podalydès are patently not English or American is but further indication that this is a jeu d'esprit, albeit one whose most penetrating notes are tearfully poignant. Rarely in cinema has conversation between lovers been such a source of endless fascination and tranquility: no lovers' spats, no conjugal histrionics, just intelligent discourse, and a love held true, just as it is rendered immutable by the author's (and film maker's) craft.
(Tromperie)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 105m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
An American Jewish author records his intimate conversations with a married English woman in a notebook, which he later publishes as a thinly disguised fiction, under the title, 'Deception'.
Review:
Far more than a filming of Philip Roth's 1990 novel of the same name, Desplechin's wry chamber piece, as exquisitely made as a Swiss watch, is a meditation around the central love story that privileges the woman's feelings over the author's, and what a performance Seydoux's is. More controversially, perhaps, it rehabilitates Roth himself who, by all accounts and in a way Desplechin makes clear, was an inveterate womaniser for whom when you were done, you were done, as Claire Bloom learnt to her cost. Here Grinberg plays the role of the hapless wife and it is the only time we see Roth as a dealer in blatant untruths; elsewhere he is tender, thoughtful, and interested, even in his exes. The very fact that Seydoux and Podalydès are patently not English or American is but further indication that this is a jeu d'esprit, albeit one whose most penetrating notes are tearfully poignant. Rarely in cinema has conversation between lovers been such a source of endless fascination and tranquility: no lovers' spats, no conjugal histrionics, just intelligent discourse, and a love held true, just as it is rendered immutable by the author's (and film maker's) craft.
(Tromperie)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 105m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
An American Jewish author records his intimate conversations with a married English woman in a notebook, which he later publishes as a thinly disguised fiction, under the title, 'Deception'.
Review:
Far more than a filming of Philip Roth's 1990 novel of the same name, Desplechin's wry chamber piece, as exquisitely made as a Swiss watch, is a meditation around the central love story that privileges the woman's feelings over the author's, and what a performance Seydoux's is. More controversially, perhaps, it rehabilitates Roth himself who, by all accounts and in a way Desplechin makes clear, was an inveterate womaniser for whom when you were done, you were done, as Claire Bloom learnt to her cost. Here Grinberg plays the role of the hapless wife and it is the only time we see Roth as a dealer in blatant untruths; elsewhere he is tender, thoughtful, and interested, even in his exes. The very fact that Seydoux and Podalydès are patently not English or American is but further indication that this is a jeu d'esprit, albeit one whose most penetrating notes are tearfully poignant. Rarely in cinema has conversation between lovers been such a source of endless fascination and tranquility: no lovers' spats, no conjugal histrionics, just intelligent discourse, and a love held true, just as it is rendered immutable by the author's (and film maker's) craft.