• Berlin Festival.The Berlinale is looking for herself with more authors, fewer stars and fewer women

One of the characters in Salinger's story 'Raise Carpenters, the Roof Beam' refers to literature not so much as a profession but as a religion. Thought can give rise to mistakes; to misunderstandings of mystical air about the figure itself by enigmatic force of the author of the story that the protagonist (attentive to Margaret Qualley) of 'My Salinger year' (MI Salinger year) endorses. And so on until one good day, it is decided, after working for a while at Salinger's literary agency answering the letters of his countless and hurting fans, to read Salinger. Then, everything changes and he realizes that Jerry (that's what Salinger is called on the tape) can be cruel, ironic, bleak, funny, deeply emotional and, for all that, irrefutably Salinger. Too bad that Philippe Falardeau's own and syrupy film with which Berlinale has been well inaugurated and inaugurated does not do the same exercise as its protagonist. Nobody is obliged to read anyone, but it is also not good to use what is read as an excuse to launch the opposite.

During the presentation, the Canadian director of films applauded long ago as the delicate and exciting ' Professor Lazhar' (2011) insisted that the reason for his new work is to teach how "art could change a life." The phrase pronounced it without blushing. And that is it. The tape, to situate us, adapts Joanna Rakoff's memoir that was, in effect, the literary agent of the author of 'The Guardian in the Rye'. That role, that of the housekeeper of genius, is at the expense of an always immeasurable (size matters) Sigourney Weaver very much in her role as ruthless Lieutenant Ripley. Someone also reminded Katharine Parker, her character in 'Working Girl' , and she smiled. The no less abrasive (of the scorching verb) and thin (of the incredible adverb) Margaret Qualley (yes, that of 'Once upon a time in ... Hollywood') , in the role of submissive apprentice and letter answerer, gives her the reply With a rare perfection. Just as blunt, but much more delicate. No offense. Let's say that in the duel of the two actresses all virtue and all grace go away.

The rest is, as has been said, something (or very) confusing. It is clear that what is involved is to build a mirror in which the protagonist's vital project runs parallel to that of the discovery not so much of Salinger's work in particular as of the very meaning of literature. The problem is that the tape repeats the chorus with a bewildering or only load-bearing insistence. The director does not save any of the resources (or just tricks) that every film with aspirations to modern, postmodern or metamodern is forced to reproduce. From the rupture of the fourth wall to the overlapping letters, not forgetting the duplication of the character on the same plane, everything is there as if it were a vademecum of the corny thing. Once again, only the disenchanted charm (or the other way around) of the protagonist couple is saved and, already put, saves us.

The director says that his intention, beyond copying a beautiful book, was to reproduce the sensation of discovering an author so associated with the doubts of adolescence when he turns 49 . The ones he has. That, he says, happened to him. Then he insists on the art of before. Weaver, by his side, did not miss the opportunity to recognize the work of the great forgotten: the fans. "I sincerely believe that they are not given the importance they deserve. They are treated with disdain. And it is they, both in film and literature, who make sense of all this." The reflection comes to mind because the tape also tries to deal with it: passion transformed in the only possible sense.

Thus, the new director of the Berlinale, Carlo Chatrian , fulfilled his objective halfway. Let's say you used the magnetism of two irrefutable actresses to more than present, hide your intentions. What, really, is a somewhat twisted way of making yourself known. Once the photographers process was completed, he let it be the director Jia Zhang-ke who officiated as a true host. His film 'Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue' gives the measure of what is clearly intended. The Chinese master makes a kind of majestic prayer divided into twenty chapters dedicated to his land: Fenyang. Through countless interviews, the recent history of China emerges entirely reflected in the faces of its people and in the voice of its writers who sang their wounds, their achievements and their lives. Sounds lyrical and, indeed, it is. This almost religious.

Let's say to finish that 'My Salinger year' happens a little, and without moving from Salinger, like banana fish. If you remember the story, these beings behave in a seemingly odd way. If they end up in a pit full of bananas, they are crammed and fattened to the point of being trapped forever there, in the hole, victims of their gluttony and foolishness. Who knows if Philippe Falardeau has not happened the same and for the same reasons?

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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