My New York Year

This Canadian-Irish co-production dramatises Joanna Rakoff's memoir My Salinger Year, recalling her time working as an assistant to the agent of the famed reclusive author of landmark novel The Catcher in the Rye. Rakoff (played by Margaret Qualley) gets to speak by phone to the client everyone in the office addresses as "Jerry", but spends most of her time kowtowing to her fearsome boss (Sigourney Weaver). She is forced to send out blunt, pro-forma responses to the often earnest and touching fan letters that Salinger refuses to read, before feeding them into the shredder. This should play out like a fascinating entry point into the mysterious world of an off-limits literary legend, yet Philippe Falardeau's film proves an exercise in frustration. It offers little to say about Salinger's enduring appeal, the central character of Joanna is bland, with Qualley showing little of the zip she brought to her jail-bait pickup in Tarantino's Once upon a Time... in Hollywood), and there is only the vaguest sense of a New York atmosphere. Only Weaver's commanding turn as the brusque-yet-caring agent with her own secrets to hide really comes alive. Disappointing fare indeed.