Tromperie

I want to rate it higher but I think most of what I liked is just what Roth wrote. There’s not a whole lot of dramatic tension until the third act, and I know English-language productions do it all the time but it being in French without changing the setting remains deeply weird throughout. Characters being English vs American is important for the story and all the dialogue being spoken in Parisian French removes a lot of Roth’s personality and specificity

It certainly must be a hard task to adapt Roth to the screen, as his novels are mostly his particular inner voice translated into words, but Desplechin hits some good notes -- the relationship between writing and love affairs as a poignant, deceptive creative process, blending life and imagination into the same confusing, paranoid thing -- and Seydoux's presence is just too talented to make us lose interest in whatever is happening before our eyes.

disappointment. wastes the interesting nastiness of philip into this light heartedness. what this film needs is anxiety