Non-Fiction (Doubles vies)
(France, 108 min.)
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas
Starring:
Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne,
Nora Hamzawi, Christa Théret
 |
Courtesy of TIFF |
Once, when I was taking a course on literary modernism, the
professor asked the class a pressing question. “What is the line between high
art and low art?” he queried, leaving a group of theory-versed undergraduate
students surprisingly tongue-tied. The book under discussion was Daphne Du
Maurier’s Rebecca and, when
unfortunately called upon by the professor, I sidestepped the answer by
offering an anecdote. I said that being a thrifty student, I bought my books second-hand
at various bookstores and while everything else on the reading list—Faulkner,
Joyce, Woolf, etc.—appeared on the “literature” shelves, poor Rebecca and her front cover worthy of a
Harlequin romance, was relegated to the general “Fiction” section. However, it
was the one book on the list that got the cashier really excited. “My Cousin Rachel’s even better, dear,”
was her reply.