This is a valentine to writers.
Director/scripter Philippe Falardeau’s gentle drama — adapted from Joanna Rakoff’s 2014 memoir, and available via Amazon Prime — is as delightful as her book. Imagine a less acerbic take on The Devil Wears Prada, set instead in New York’s mid-1990s literary world, and boasting a truly droll (mostly) off-camera supporting character.
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| Finding it increasingly difficult not to empathize with so many of the adoring fans who write passionate letters to J.D. Salinger, Joanna (Margaret Qualley) grieves over the way this correspondence is treated by the author's literary agency. |
In most cases, so much narration would become a tiresome gimmick, but not here: Qualley is so endearing, so wide-eyed and ingenuous, that we can’t spend enough time with her.
The story begins as Joanna impulsively abandons UC Berkeley’s graduate school, without a formal farewell to her musician boyfriend (Hamza Haq, as Karl), and moves to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a poet (having placed two pieces in the Paris Review). Lacking a job or place to live, she moves in with tolerant best friend Jenny (Seána Kerslake).
Joanna makes the rounds, and eventually sits across from Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), who heads her own modest literary agency. It’s a stubborn remnant of the mid-century publishing world, with plush, wood-paneled offices occupied by professionally dressed staffers who still rely on typewriters and Dictaphones, and where agents doze after three-martini lunches.
Margaret, needing an assistant, is impressed by Joanna’s enthusiasm. “Be prepared for long hours,” Margaret archly warns. “A lot of college graduates would love this job.”
The work load does prove grueling, particularly when Joanna — wholly unfamiliar with Dictaphones — initially can’t transcribe more than two or three words at a time. (I’ve been there; I recall how gawdawful that process was.) But while Margaret is stoic and old-fashioned, her work-related demands aren’t unreasonable; she’s far from the savage martinet Meryl Streep made Miranda Priestly, in The Devil Wears Prada.
The “surprise” lands when it turns out that Margaret has long represented J.D. Salinger, whom she — and everybody else in the office — refers to as Jerry. Joanna is tasked with processing his voluminous fan mail, all of which must be answered via decades-old form letters.
All the fan mail then is shredded: which is to say, Salinger never sees it. As he wishes.
Margaret therefore is less the reclusive Salinger’s literary agent — he hasn’t published anything since a short story in 1965 (!) — and more his protector. “Never, ever give out his address,” she cautions.
Joanna, although well-read, never has experienced anything by Salinger: not even Catcher in the Rye, the seminal novel that prompts the vast majority of his fan mail. This comes as a shock to the new boyfriend she accumulates fairly quickly: Don (Douglas Booth), a condescending and insufferably smug socialist.
(Frankly, I don’t understand what Joanna sees in him, and Booth’s one-note performance — he barely rises above the tired stereotype — doesn’t help.)
At the office, Joanna finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the often heart-wrenching letters that come to Salinger, from all over the world; being so callous isn’t in her sensitive nature. In another of Falardeau’s cinematic conceits, several of them are read aloud by their writers, addressing us with passion and sincerity, with the other people in their lives oblivious to this soliloquy.
This stylized touch of heightened reality hearkens back to 2001’s Amélie and other slightly exaggerated character pieces. The New York that Falardeau and production designer Elise de Blois envision is both real and vaguely unreal: particularly with respect to the captivating retro touches within Margaret’s agency.
No surprise: Margaret disdains computers and the Internet — hence the electric typewriters — and loftily insists that they’ll never catch on.
Films of this nature rise or fall on the strength of their various character dynamics, and Falardeau deftly keeps us entertained. Weaver is a hoot as Margaret, whose carefully assembled sophistication never quite slides into arrogance; her statements are calmly measured, as if she’s quick-witted enough to select the precise words placed within each sentence.
Margaret’s frequent double-takes, in the face of Joanna’s bubbly eagerness, are a hoot. Qualley makes her spontaneous and unrestrained: qualities that Weaver’s Margaret simply doesn’t comprehend.
Colm Feore is a quietly urbane presence as Daniel, the “special man” in Margaret’s life, and also one of the first to treat Joanna with respect. Brían F. O’Byrne, Leni Parker and Yanic Truesdale make an amiable group as office staffers Hugh, Pam and Max; the latter will be recognized from his long run on TV’s The Gilmore Girls. Ellen David is a stitch in her brief appearance as Joanna’s placement agent.
Martin Léon’s frothy, often whimsical orchestral score occasionally sounds very much like Yann Tiersen’s score for Amélie (not a bad thing).
Falardeau’s film likely will be too mannered and “precious” for mainstream viewers, but bibliophiles will lap it up like a cat taking to milk. And I had an equally delightful time with Rakoff’s book.
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