Two hours of French naval-gazing about smoking, drinking, complaining...

On balance, writer and director Assayas just about pulls it off: the film is uneven, certainly, but the fascinating, flawed characters reel us in.

It sounds farcical, but it's also a serious work from the writer-director Olivier Assayas and his key performers that interrogates the nature of literary value today through the words of uncommonly rounded and deeply appealing characters.

…allows the audience to sit back and listen to the conversation, making up our own minds about the people involved. It’s this feel for dinner-party chat that makes Non-Fiction such a pleasure to participate in…