“The 7th Function is a satiric romp through the upper echelons of Parisian intellectual life, indicting anyone – Sollers, for example – who takes the signified more seriously than the signifier. Yet it also has a serious point to make about the power of language to shape reality … It is also very entertaining, like a dirty Midnight in Paris for the po-mo set; look out for Bernard Henri-Lévy getting fondled by Lacan’s mistress at a dinner party hosted by Julia Kristeva, or Judith Butler in a threesome with Bayard and Hélène Cixous … But in the end, The 7th Function of Language isn’t (only) playing for lowbrow/highbrow laughs; it’s a mise en scène of conflicting ideas about Frenchness. In an election year that saw Marine Le Pen get dangerously close to the French presidency, Binet’s postmodern policier asks where the nation is going, and what kind of car it will drive to get there.”
–Lauren Elkin, The Guardian, May 12, 2017
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