My Salinger Year

A film set in New York. Joanna wants to be a writer. She writes poetry, has left graduate school and is new to the city. She takes a job at a literary agency. The agency works the old way. No computers, typewriters instead; records are kept on cards and her boss smokes while she talks on the phone. Joanna's job is answering letters. The agency's biggest client is J. D. Salinger, and readers have been writing to him for forty years. The rule is plain: none of it reaches the author, and everyone gets the same form reply. Joanna starts reading them. Some are ordinary; some are not. A veteran, a schoolboy, someone whose friend has died. After a while she stops using the form and starts writing in her own words. What the narrative is interested in is not the literary world but a boundary: on whose behalf are you speaking, whose letter is it, and where does your job end. The side line is her own life: the man she lives with, a flat with no rent, a relationship she left, and the fact that she is not writing. Salinger is heard on the phone a few times and his face is never seen; that choice is the best decision in the film. The source is Joanna Rakoff's memoir. Margaret Qualley plays Joanna and Sigourney Weaver plays her boss. Douglas Booth is in the cast. Philippe Falardeau wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the book world and quiet, personal narratives. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the pace is slow and the character's own writing never deepens enough.