It’s been more than a year since we were lucky enough to watch “My Salinger Year” at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival. And wow, things have changed in a year, huh? Well, while the entire world still deals with the global pandemic, IFC Films is preparing the long-awaited release of Philippe Falardeau’s new feature.
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With “My Salinger Year” arriving next week, we’re happy to give our readers an exclusive peek at a clip from the new film starring Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley. Honestly, if those two names aren’t enough to get you excited, just watch the new clip and see how well they play off each other in the story about a young aspiring writer that works under reclusive author J. D. Salinger’s literary agent.
While Sigourney Weaver is a known quantity, having played iconic roles for decades (she’s freaking Ripley!), it might actually be Qualley that should get you most excited about this film. After breaking out in roles in films such as “Donnybrook” (arguably her best performance yet) and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the young actress has a number of big films and TV series coming over the next couple of years.
As mentioned, we caught “My Salinger Year” when it debuted last year, and in our review, we said, “The film’s smorgasbord of strong performances, and gorgeous autumnal production design, particularly outweigh the script’s shortfalls. It’s undeniable that ‘My Salinger Year’ puts forward a strong argument for maintaining simplicity.”
“My Salinger Year” arrives in select theaters and VOD on March 5. You can watch the exclusive clip, as well as the trailer, below.
Here’s the synopsis:
New York in the 90s: After leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, Joanna (Margaret Qualley) gets hired as an assistant to Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), the stoic and old-fashioned literary agent of J. D. Salinger. Fluctuating between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-panelled office – where dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze off after three-martini lunches – and her nights in a sink-less Brooklyn apartment with her socialist boyfriend. Joanna’s main task is processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s impersonal standard letter and impulsively begins personalizing the responses. The results are both humorous and moving, as Joanna, while using the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.