REVIEW: My Salinger Year (2021)
Famed Québec director Philippe Falardeau continues his quasi-American path after releasing Chuck and The Good Lie with My Salinger Year, telling the true story of aspiring writer Joanna Rakoff (Margaret Qualley), who gets a job at a literary agency representing famed author J.D. Salinger. The boss, Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), is very strict and asks for any “fan mail” sent to the agency to be shredded and responded with an automated letter. However, Joanna is moved by the “fan mail” she reads and decides to send her own responses. With a star-studded lead cast including Margaret Qualley, Sigourney Weaver, Colm Feore, and Douglas Booth, My Salinger Year had the material to “rise” Philippe Falardeau from the contrived predictability and unoriginality of Québec cinema to more daring projects, with a higher budget (akin to what Denis Villeneuve is doing right now). However, the movie has nothing interesting to say about Rakoff, Salinger, or literature.
There’s a specific sequence in the movie, which happens halfway through the film, where Joanna goes to Washington to meet a publisher who will discuss with Salinger. Usually, in a typical biopic, this is the moment where the “character” the film is based on gets a memorable life experience that the audience shares with them, and it is also the moment where the director’s purpose (or through-line) becomes clear. That never happens. My Salinger Year chronicles the events of Joanna Rakoff’s career in Salinger’s literary agency, with no through-line. How can the audience invest themselves in a movie, especially a biopic, with no through-line? Sure, we see her typing her personal responses, which is Falardeau’s most facile attempt at character development since he butchered Léon Doré’s twisted psyche in his adaptation of C’est pas moi, je le jure!, but what are we supposed to learn with everything we’re seeing? “Salinger is a literary God?” Who doesn’t know that? I mean, who hasn’t read The Catcher in the Rye? (I’m generalizing, of course, but most literature classes have that book in its curriculum, and those that haven’t read it are considered to be “the lucky ones.”) What can the film tell us, besides the fact that Salinger is a literary God? What can we learn from Rakoff’s experience in the agency world? Falardeau’s answer for it is “not much,” as the film spends way too much time showing what Rakoff does, without any access to how this will “change” her life experience or boast her opportunities as a writer. Sure, this experience led her to become a writer. Still, we barely see that in the movie–Falardeau focuses way too much on the agency’s superficial corporate side instead of focusing solely on Rakoff’s view of that same agency.
There’s only one thing Falardeau seems capable of doing (really well) is to direct A-list actors brilliantly. With a surface-level plot as pedantic as the one found in My Salinger Year, thank God the actors give great performances. Margaret Qualley continues to prove her star-making qualities after stealing her scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Sharing the screen with Sigourney Weaver and actually stealing it is no easy task, but Qualley manages to do exactly that. Weaver is great and shares dynamic chemistry with Colm Feore’s Daniel (who, once again, is criminally underused) and phenomenally accompanies Qualley for her to lead the entire movie. Still, none of the characters are inherently compelling since we don’t have access to their goals (and the director’s). Even if Falardeau can direct actors well, there’s, once again, no purpose to any of them for being in the movie since we don’t know what story he wants to tell with these characters. The film also goes into highly clichéd territory with Douglas Booth and Qualley’s relationship–it follows every beat of the “unhappy relationship” tropes in most biopics where a character randomly meets someone and quasi-falls in love with them until he or she realizes how egocentric they are. In this film, however, Rakoff’s life experience with Booth’s Don leads to absolutely nowhere and never evolves the character. Once again, the film has nothing to say.
It’s an incredibly frustrating film to watch–solely because the talent is there. Falardeau is talented; he has proven himself with 2006’s Congorama and 2011’s Monsieur Lazhar, but, in this film, however, he has quite literally nothing to say. Stars only make “half” of a good biopic. If there is no compelling material for these stars to play with, the movie won’t be worth watching. Unfortunately, for Falardeau et al., My Salinger Year falls in that exact category. You’re much better off revisiting (or watching for the first time) Falardeau’s earlier films instead.
nice review Maxance! Keep it up.