The movie reminded me 50-year old Andrzei Wajda's "Everything for sale" where characters ponder the encroachment of cinema on theater and TV on cinema (in Communist Poland) in a tragicomic situation. Of course, "Non-Fiction" is a comedy with nobody dying and everybody enjoying healthy doze of sex, which replaced alcohol of "Sideways", with which is also shares some affinities. Now the characters discuss in a nonchalant and cynical manner the fate of publishing business in the era of the internet and social networks. But behind their cynical masks there is genuine fear but also concern about the fate of high culture. The only remotely sympathetic character is the protagonist's much suffering policy wonk wife. However, sex- and fame-obsessed author of semi-autobiographical chick lit Leonard Spiegel is hardly a good spokesman for high culture even when he quotes Nietzsche and Sartre (seemingly an obligation in France where even a bisexual ditz quotes somebody to her publisher boss in bed). Movie even adds a postmodernist element in the form of the character of Juliet Binoche--washed out TV actress in the French imitations of NYPD--to text to real Juliet Binoche, the movie star. Olivier Assayas is a famed director but this is not his best scoop.
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