Arnaud Desplechin tries to give flesh to the words of Philip Roth

Adapted by Philip Roth, Deception on the screens Wednesday, December 29, reflects the interest that Arnaud Desplechin has in the American writer. Surrounded by Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grimberg and Emmanuelle Devos, the director gives voice to words, but does not necessarily succeed in embodying them.

American writer alone in London, Philip regularly receives his mistress at his home, as he married. The author often notes in her notebook what she says to him to feed her next book. He sees his other mistresses and his wife again, as if to investigate his fickle neurosis, obsessions and writing.

Denis Podalydès, an American writer with chastened French, in London in the 1980s, is an astonishing choice. The subject of the film is universal (fidelity, adultery, sex, friendship), but the gap between the roles and their actors, whose talent is not in question, is a staging choice to which we join or not.

To counterbalance the film’s dominant dialogues, Desplechin varies the settings: the office where the writer receives his “English mistress”, the New York hospital where Philip visits an “ex” suffering from cancer, his wife’s home , the bar where the unmissable student meets … Film of words, Deception also shows sensuality, but as an obligatory figure, inherent in the subject.

Autofiction, the genre is based on the recognition of the public in an individual experience that is exposed. But where is the cinema? The text would be appreciated more in the theater, where an adaptation of the American would perhaps gain in impact. The emotion of the film, if one finds any in its cold atmospheres, is literary, but Desplechin is not Bergman.

Gender: Drama
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Actors: Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos
Country : France
Duration : 1h45
Exit : December 29, 2021
Distributer : The pact

Synopsis: London – 1987. Philip is a famous American writer exiled in London. His mistress regularly comes to meet him in his office, which is the refuge of the two lovers. They make love there, argue, get together and talk for hours on end; women who mark his life, sex, anti-Semitism, literature, and loyalty to oneself …