Copie conforme

I came across the film when researching a piece I was writing on Plato's ideas of beauty and aesthetics. Although Plato isn't for everyone I thought this film really helped my students understand some of his central concerns relating to the difference between an idea, a reality and an imitation. In our class discussions on Plato's notions of Mimesis and Diegesis, this film greatly helped.

The film forces us to wonder to what extent the relationship between the two central characters is real, or an imitation of a once real relationship. It asks is a real relationship any better than a certified copy i.e a fake relationship where both parties pretend it is real. That is the central question - the value of the authentic versus the value of the fake.

If you're familiar with the movies of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, this is a big departure from his usual work. Shot in Italy with Juliette Binoche and some dude, it's basically a romantic comedy, but nothing like Hollywood would ever produce (well, it actually reminds a little bit of Before Sunset by Richard Linklater, but miles away from the Julia Roberts/Sandra Bullock avenue).

It's really enjoyable with unexpected progress of the story (unexpected especially if you're brainwashed by certain type of movies about male-female relationships). It has room for interpretation, everything is not explained and it lets the viewer bind the remaining threads. It's also funny and I found it quite intense. It held my attention and actually felt about ten minutes shorter than it really is. I have to admit that I'm a big fan of intelligent movies about male-female relationships. Long well written and acted scenes with just a man and a woman talking don't turn me off.

The formal control of the shots by the director and the cinematographer are masterful. There are those long shots that Kiarostami has used before, but used masterfully in the context of the story, and not in any "look at me, Mom, I'm sculpting in time" -art house tedium.

I talked with couple other persons who saw the movie, and they said that they didn't like it. But let me tell you that it's really good.

"Certified Copy" is a film essentially cut in two. Both halves are lovely and when put together it makes for a remarkable whole work. It's a very simple film on the surface, the plot made up almost entirely of a day-long conversation between an author (William Shimell) and a woman (Juliette Binoche) showing him around town. The conversation begins with them being these strangers meeting for the first time, as they discuss his new book (the title of the film) and the theories he brings up within it. They discuss the significance of a copy as opposed to it's original and the film brings up a lot of questions on artificiality, within culture and within life. Questions arise as to whether or not every individual person is just essentially a copy of someone else, and this becomes absolutely fascinating. Then, everything changes. A waitress at a cafe mistakes them for a married couple and the two spend the rest of the day going along with this, playing a game that they are married and they go back and forth as an unhappy couple would.

Or was it mistake? It becomes clear that these people have some connection with each other, whether they are divorced, former lovers or something entirely separate, and the conversation becomes much more biting and intriguing. Writer/director Abbas Kiarostami keeps us gripped into this conversation, as these two ponder on the copies of the world, along with the tribulations of a marriage, what makes a good husband, what makes a good father and so much more. She attacks him for being such an absent father (is her son really his?) and he explains that sometimes one partner in the marriage just has to be gone and that's the way the world is. The film poses so many interesting questions on the world and leaves it up to the viewer to decide the answers for themselves. Each character has their own strong opinion, but Kiarostami never takes a side and tells the viewer the resolution. It's a powerful picture that keeps you thinking long after it's over.

Part of the power of course relies on the strength of the performances, and both of these actors knock it out of the park. William Shimell was the perfect choice for the distant, simple author. Juliette Binoche, however, steals the show, with an authentic and brave performance that ranks up with some of her absolute best. She is arguably the finest actress in cinema today, and has a grasp on portraying vulnerability that very few actors can come close to achieving. Within her you really see the pain of a woman scorned and the exhausting life led by a single mother constantly having to think of someone other than herself. She is everything here; emotional, strong, falling apart and beautiful. It's a perfect performance in a magnificent film. I feel like this is a picture that will only get better on repeated viewings, and it's still quite strong on the first one.

In Tuscany, a French woman (Juliette Binoche) arrives in a lecture room to see the middle-aged British writer James Miller (William Shimell), who has published a book about the validity of copies versus original works. However, her son forces her to leave the lecture early and she gives her phone number to a common friend to give it to James.

He comes to her antique shop and invites her to drive around. However, she takes James to the village of Lucignano. While they are traveling, he autographs six books she had bought and they discuss the subject of his book. When they arrive in the village, they are mistakenly taken as husband and wife and the woman decides to play the game and soon the bitter James Miller assumes the role of her husband.

I am not a fan of Abbas Kiarostami, but I see his movies since they are usually challenging and open to interpretations. I have just seen "Copie Conforme" on DVD and I have my understanding of the story that may be or may be not the real intention of this Iranian writer / director.

Juliette Binoche's character definitely knows James Miller and there are evidences: first, she has a reserved spot in his lecture; then her son comments that she had decided to fall in love with the British writer; last, when James arrives in her antique shop, they do not introduce themselves to each other and they are not too formal as strangers certainly would be.

I believe that James Miller first met her years ago while she was walking on street with her son following her but never together. She probably would be a single mother with rejection to her son and on that occasion they might have become lovers or they had at least a love affair in the hotel that they visit in the end but James probably would be married.

They travel to the romantic village of Lucignano and they have a long discussion about copies and originals art works. When the owner of the cafeteria believes that they are married, the French woman plays games with James Miller pretending that they have been married for fifteen years, probably because she might have wanted to be his wife in the past. In the end, there is a parallel with the central subject of the story, copies vs. originals, and the drama turns into a faithful copy of a romantic comedy with a long-term marriage. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil):"Cópia Fiel ("Faithful Copy")

I like it when a film really understands its characters and as we follow them we can see their foibles and their follies and their humanity being opened up and challenged. The Coen Brothers do this with impeccable black comedy in the framework of a thriller, as in Fargo or Barton Fink or Burn After Reading, whereby the entire tenuous structure of people's lives begins to collapse and we are left perfectly conflicted with sympathy and delight in how this will play out. Then there's the Before Trilogy, and Journey to Italy, which quietly follows its characters learning about themselves as we are too. Certified Copy plays like a condensed version of the Trilogy, and has some of the 'lost in a landscape bigger than themselves' exploration of Journey, yet this film never feels as in control or as vitally connected to its ideas as those films do. Many things are discussed, and layers revealed, but it's just not entirely convincing.

Not entirely convincing, but an excoriating watch nonetheless. When this film was finished, I felt like I had just witnessed an entire relationship, from the first fruitful seeds, to infatuation and love and friction and wear and decay, and in a sense I had because that is essentially what the two characters of the film take us through. The film begins with William Shimell, playing the role of modest and charming British academic who is promoting his book in Italy. The idea of this book gives the film its title and what the whole film begins to play around with: the copy. The copy, and it's relation to the original, its authenticity, and whether one should invest any time in an original if a recreation is believable. He would answer 'no' to that last thought. Juliette Binoche appears at his speech, leaves his translator a note, and the next day he appears at her small museum/exhibition/trinket shop, artistic debate is continued, and thus their journey begins. The boundaries of conversation between two people who are seemingly strangers soon dissolves and they are soon fluctuating between moments of bitterness, delight and contemplation, and soon enough in what appears to be a bizarre role-play, the assume the role of a married couple and any façade that they try to wear is soon being flayed.

Binoche is utterly captivating and her award for Best Actress at Cannes is entirely deserved. She is seemingly inexhaustible, communicating in Italian, French and English and losing no degree of vulnerability, bitterness or magnetism between the languages, and she has a remarkable way of kind of softly inhabiting any given situation but being able to turn caustic and uncomfortable with immediacy. There are moments when the characters are sitting opposite each other in conversation and they are speaking directly into the camera, and when Binoche does this it's never less than transfixing.

Shimmel, for a first time actor is for the most part quite grounded and reserved, but it's with him that the film often feels at its flattest. He's the more outwardly ruminating intellectual, always approaching things with a contemplative thought, and it often feels like the film is struggling to maintain a deep thought, as if in fear of being mocked for being nothing less than poetic. Maybe that's the way the character is supposed to be, but all his affectations get tiring. He comments on Eucalyptus trees being so totally unique, how each one has its own shape and definition and being unlike the other one, and as truthful as it might be, it's just a comment that leaves you thinking 'And?' At other times the exchanges of these characters are scintillating, as when an innocuous pit-stop at a café becomes changes the gears of their relationship, and Binoche begins to furiously criticise his cool, charming bullshit-masquerade. The dialogue operates in these two modes, between fascinating and questionable, but never really finds its footing.

Abbas Kiarostami is clearly a man who knows exactly what he wants to do and how to do it, and at the jolly age of 74 all the wisdom and joy and despair he must have accumulated in his lifetime can be felt here, in the vivaciousness and the bitterness of the characters, in the way a camera can just sit and stay trained for minutes on end and let the people unfurl themselves, but sometimes it feels like all he is trying to much to do justice to all his collected experience in life. There's a shot toward the end with our couple standing in a courtyard together and just in front of them is a far older couple, man and wife, standing on the same side of each other, tentatively walking and supporting each other. The imagery is obvious but the connotations are beautiful, and it's the sort of a shot that could only have worked as aposiopesis to the journey preceding it. (Maybe that is the point)

So there was an ambivalence I felt throughout the film, but it's hard to dismiss something this lovingly made, as an expression of the melancholy of our relationships in life. There's a blustery and picturesque feel throughout this Italian journey that is hard to argue with.