The trouble with CBC’s Gem streaming service is that you can never entirely quit it because it periodically, unpredictably, releases watchable things. The first film that I’ve watched in 2023 is a Gem find: My Salinger Year, released in some countries as My New York Year. It’s a film based on a memoir by American writer Joanna Rakoff, set in NYC, directed by Philippe Falardeau, he of at least three other gems, The Left-Hand Side of the Fridge, Congorama, and My Internship in Canada, all in Quebecois French and all as Canadian as anything. This film is set in New York and I have no idea why the CBC puts it on offer under the heading “Canadian Film”. Perhaps because it was co-produced with Canadian money (the Irish, equally oddly, have financed it too), with Telefilm Canada, Irish Screen and Crave among chief funders. Some of the crew I expect is Canadian, and the film was nominated in a good number of categories for the Canadian Screen Awards and the Quebec equivalent. The shoot took place mostly in Montreal, with a few days in NYC. Fine, there’s also Colm Feore in a small role. But the story itself is about the magic and mythology of the American literary world and NYC in particular. While I am always happy to see a new release by one of my favourite directors, I think it’s ever so slightly dystopic that production companies from the very small cinematographies spend money on making American movies. This gonna be like the spaghetti western genre? The Irish and the Canadian giving slightly off takes on American culture? “But I’m not scouting for films in English just for the sake of shooting in English or just for the sake of shooting with Hollywood stars,” Falardeau assured the Canadian Press that he’s not going Denis Villeneuve all the way. “He’ll direct English-language films if the subject matter speaks to him.” Good.
Throat clearing done and over with, I’d like to say that it’s a delightful film. How many films exist that are proper and earnest love letters to literature and to writing – including, most eccentrically, poetry writing? We’ve seen films on screenwriting, Hollywood, the magic of the movies, the magic of the musicals, the appeal of journalism and fashion magazines and the power of straight theatre (remember Birdman, the best thing Michael Keaton ever did?) but films about love of literature are extremely few. Joanna Rakoff’s memoir, from which Falardeau developed the script, tells us about the first year after she moved to New York City as a fledgling writer with only a few poetry credits to her name. It's the 1990s, early days of email while most people still wrote on typewriters. Rent needs to be paid so she finds work in a literary agency whose most famous (and reclusive… and largely retired) client is the man referred to by the staff in hushed voices as “Jerry”: JD Salinger. Jerry phoning is a big thing, and Jerry coming by to discuss a piece of writing… well, it’s a once in a lifetime thing. Salinger’s fans keep writing to him, heartbreaking, revealing letters, and none of them will reach him. Part of Joanna’s job is to read them and send generic responses to all, that Mr Salinger does not wish to receive any reader mail. As Joanna grows, the letter writers stop being silly to her and appear as independent characters, passing her on the street, sitting next to her on a bus, talking to her about her life and theirs. Literature is an urgent and intimate matter, not unlike pop songs.
Joanna’s boss is a formidable and complicated woman, tone-perfectly played by Sigourney Weaver sporting a Sontagian grey swoosh. The grandpa at the Guardian panned the movie and one of the first mistakes he made in his review is to compare it unfavourably to Devil Wears Prada, which he found much “sexier”. These are two very different films, however. (I guess any film about a younger and an older woman in a professional setting will inspire lazy parallels with Prada.) Margaret’s manner is strangely conflicted, a mix of pessimism and enthusiasm, and later in the film, after its most dramatic event had taken place, we learn what her greatest pain in life has been. Sigourney Weaver outdoes herself in the last joint scene, after Joanna timidly announces that she is leaving to try something more, face a greater challenge than agenting: thoughts of roads not taken, betrayal, understanding, all playing out on Margaret’s face.
The script knows its publishing and writing world, but is not cynical about it. “Jerry” isn’t a diva either, but a decent if sometimes confused elderly author with some good practical advice for “Susanna” (he’s also hard of hearing) who picks up the phone at Margaret’s office. Everyone at the agency pretty much loves their job, although they all have quirks and obsessions. A lot of real authors get mentioned or discussed. Judy Blume appears in the story at one point with a new manuscript and Margaret blows the relationship with her lack of tact. There’s a funny scene involving Rachel Cusk, who was just becoming known in the nineties thanks to her debut Saving Agnes. People date other writers, mingle in parties with writers and publishers, go to readings (poetry nights in bookstores were still a thing), share crappy apartments with other writers. Joanna feels like a tourist, and is probing to see if she belongs. Her best friend decides to leave NYC and move to a place where her husband can pursue a great career opportunity. Being a writer, she says to Joanna, is something we wanted as teenagers. I’d quite like to grow up now.
In a rush to move to NY, Joanna dropped out of university in California and never properly broke up with her first sweetheart. As the movie progresses and her new relationship with the live-in boyfriend encounters problems – if a couple consists of two writers and only one of them is writing, there’ll be grief: it is written – Karl comes more clearly into focus and Joanna wonders if she made a mistake by abandoning him. There’s an incredibly sad scene told cheerfully, in dance and voice-over, in which Joanna realizes that losing Karl is final and a mistake she will have to live with. We hear Joanna’s thoughts about finally reading and loving Salinger while we’re watching her and Karl dancing in a busy public place among other couples who are also dancing – again, literature is straight up stuff of life. One can’t be without the other.
Anyway, don’t miss it: https://gem.cbc.ca/media/my-salinger-year/s01e01 To avoid commercials on Gem, watch in incognito browsing mode. Viewers outside Canada can I’m sure find it in other streaming platforms; Gem might geoblock them.
January in (other) arts
Jan 6, 7 pm, St James Cathedral: Organist Matthew Larkin will play La Nativité by Olivier Messiaen. Entrance is free. Here’s a section from the work performed by an organist in Cambridge.
Jan 16, 7 pm. Former Tafelmusik music director and first violinist Elisa Citterio is back from Italy and will perform a solo concert at Heliconian Hall.
From Jan 20, Fall on Your Knees, Canadian Stage: I don’t know, I have some hopes for this new version of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s best novel, you know? I could be wrong.
Jan 24, Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié etc at Tiff. I’ve seen this 3-hour Godard-tribute left-a-ton several years ago and while I would not repeat the experience, I would recommend seeing it once in a large movie theatre. Key thing I took from the story about Quebec’s (fictional) Red Brigades-style direct-action activism: these kids all come from upper middle class and highly educated backgrounds, and the film is very lucid about that. Also: the anti-capitalist terrorist cell trying to reconstruct societal bonds along non-exploitative lines… is supported by one of its members working as a prostitute. It’s brilliant, in a perverse way.
Jan 27 and several dates in February, the Claus Guth-directed and fairly bleak Edwardian manor interpretation of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro opens at the COC. I reviewed this for the G&M when the production first premiered in Toronto in about 2017ish and will probably not review it again, but may talk to some of the people involved. Watch this space.
Also on Jan 27, Viking by Stéphane Lafleur will screen at Tiff with the director around for the Q&A. I haven’t seen this one and will probably go, because I adored adored adored his Continental, un film sans fusil. May I add, I really liked it? And I just remembered I still haven’t watched Tu dors Nicole, also by him, which is available on Kanopy for free.
Jan 28 (and 27) 8:00 p.m at Trinity-St Paul. Toronto Consort will perform some bouncy renaissance music, a program which they bill as “a rollicking Elizabethan kitchen party”. Works by Orlando di Lasso, Playford, and Ravenscroft.