At least for most English-language viewers (those more
familiar with the Hollywood convention of, say, a Napoleon filmed in
English than with Fassbinder’s German-language Western) it may not be easy to
orient oneself within Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s Deception:
the film is set in London, depicting the relationship between a Jewish-American
author called Philip Roth and a British woman, both played by French actors
(Denis Podalydes and Lea Seydoux) in a film that feels entirely French despite
the odd scene in the pub and suchlike. The effect could be somewhat distancing,
if not for the vivacity of the performers, and for the many striking points of
specificity and immediacy: a recurring preoccupation with Judaism and Israel,
and also with Czechoslovakia, embodied both by the author’s cherished memories
of past travels and by ongoing relationships in the present. The film’s “reveal”
of sorts, not an unfamiliar one in an age of meta-reality concepts, is that
Seydoux’s unnamed character may be imagined (at least that’s what the author
tells his wife when she reads his notebook and reacts with outrage); the beauty
of sorts is in how little it matters whether or not that’s true, how the purely
imagined may be more truthful and piercing than the mundanely “fact-based.” For
instance, early on in the film, the woman with her eyes closed is able to
describe the studio in which they meet and have sex in improbably precise
detail, which paradoxically bolsters the sense that it may be imagined; the final
scene introduces further distance and displacement, intermingled with
tenderness and delight. The film overall isn’t as transporting as Desplechin’s
grander canvases, its energy level necessarily lower (notwithstanding various
moments when Podalydes seems to be channelling the director’s signature actor,
Mathieu Amalric) but it’s enjoyably elegant and fluid, engaging most
intelligently with the challenges of adapting Roth.