Wait years and act urgently. Arnaud Desplechin wanted for a long time to adapt Deception, the autobiographical novel by the American Philip Roth. He wrote the screenplay during the first lockdown and shot it in just a month in the summer of 2020, in a sort of state of grace.
Deception, It was in the 1980s a successful American writer, based in London, who received his young English mistress in his office. The secret meetings follow one another, he keeps taking notes, she inspires him terribly, she unhappy in her marriage plays the muse.
“This movie is a miracle through and through. All the fun of the game was there, I was rid of myself.”
Denis Podalydès, who plays Philip Roth in “Tromperie”to franceinfo
When the author’s wife discovers her notebook, she does not believe that these sentences are fictional. Is he a bastard? A lover of women? What is certain is that Philip Roth is from another time.
Arnaud Desplechin is a player: the loving duo divinely filmed in the writer’s camera, the former mistresses, the household scene, everything is subject to play, the language is sublime, the shots surprising. From the lightness of the moment to the gravity of feelings, it’s a delicious whirlwind. Denis Podalydès is Philip Roth’s double, and he keeps very fond memories of the shoot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4roW42rOMxo
A rather unclassifiable genre film, between Nordic tale, fantasy and rural realism, in the wild and arid landscapes of Iceland. Maria and Ingvar lead a peaceful and secluded life as sheep farmers. In the endless days of summer in the latitudes closest to the Pole, one day a strange being is born, half-human, half-animal, whom the couple decides to keep and raise as their own child. Then the shepherd’s brother arrives by surprise, an intrusion that awakens the past, its secrets, its scars.
The staging is surgical, the landscapes sublime and disturbing, this fantastic thriller is totally confusing, we cannot say how the charm works, but whatever. Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who plays Maria, she knows it, she loves the bizarre.