Our sibling blog BalanceofFood.com likes to poke fun at the front of food labels where you can imply there is more of a flavour than actually exists in a product. Those looking for a lot of J.D. Salinger in My Salinger Year will come up quite short. Salinger fans should expect more.
Joanna Rakoff (Margaret Qualley) is a poet studying in Berkeley in the mid-1990s when she comes to New York City and ends up with a job as an assistant to literary agent Margaret (Sigourney Weaver). The agency happens to have J.D. Salinger, known as Jerry, as one of its clients.
Margaret has a number of quirks, such as not wanting to use computers. Margaret is fascinating, the other characters are somewhat fascinating compared to Joanna, the lead.
Understand that Joanna Rakoff is the person who wrote the original book that led to this film. Joanna is the lead character and dominates the film.
The issue is that either Margaret Qualley is an actor who can't generate passion, angst, or personality for Joanna (quite likely), French-Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (as writer and director) didn't want Joanna to be interesting as a person (maybe?), or Rakoff loathes herself to the point where she thinks she is boring (possible). This is a significant problem for a character who dominates the film.
Qualley, real-life daughter of Andie MacDowell, is more expressive in a scene where dancing is involved than she is as an actor in the entire film. Irish actor Seána Kerslake, who plays her best friend Jenny, would have been a much better choice in the lead role (the film is a Canada-Ireland co-production).
English actor Douglas Booth plays Joanna's boyfriend Don. Don and Joanna have zero chemistry and the viewer has no reason to care about them as a couple. Boring people sometimes choose each other in real life, so if Joanna loathes herself, she certainly would loath the boyfriend character.
Falardeau or Rakoff have a line where Joanna refers to Berkeley as being in southern California, which no one in Berkeley would ever say.
Canadian film notebook: Marketing Canadian films as not Canadian
As we noted earlier this year, there are Canadian actors down the callsheet — Colm Feore, Théodore Pellerin, Yanic Truesdale, Hamza Haq, and Leni Parker — who do well in small parts. The surrounding characters, regardless of country of origin, dazzle in comparison to Joanna and Don.
CanadianCrossing.com film reviews
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
Falardeau has had better success in French than in English in his film career. The script is all over the place in terms of where the emphasis is in the moment. Pellerin's arc is way more interesting than Joanna's story and his appearances feel highly random. Falardeau also relies too much on montages for Joanna's journey, which emphasize the boring quality of her character.
One of the ongoing themes is that Joanna has never read Salinger when she starts out working at the literary agency. The film eventually gets to that point but we learn very little about how her world view changes after reading Salinger.
Falardeau worked with Rakoff to get this story but the story and character weren't worth the handcuffs placed on him in working on the project.
Sigourney Weaver is 90% of the reason to watch this film, if you have to watch this film. Be ready to fast forward through one of the most uninteresting people you will see on the screen in some time. Reward yourself with watching one of Falardeau's great Quebecois films such as Monsieur Lazhar (2011); My Internship in Canada (2015); and Congorama (2006).
video credit: YouTube/IFC Films
photo credit: My Salinger Year film
Comments