” is a strange, stifling but frequently intriguing attempt to find a cinematic match for the literary voice of Philip Roth, from his autofictional 1990 novel of the same name. It often succeeds, which is to say the filmmaking often appropriates the self-aggrandizing indulgences and knowingly oppressive masculinity of a work that isn’t among the author’s finest.
Certainly, there’s not a hint of New Yorker neurosis to Denis Podalydès, the fine French character actor who once played Nicolas Sarkozy in “The Conquest,” here cast as Roth’s not-so-alter ego Philip: a self-absorbed, philandering American writer based in London, around whose variously dysfunctional relationships with women the film languidly revolves.
Desplechin shifts the timeframe to the present. One of the film’s liveliest vignettes plunges Philip into a fantasy battle against an all-female courtroom, as he’s placed on trial for his callous attitudes toward, and abuses of, women.