Customer Reviews

Certified Copy [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Note that this review is for the film itself, which I saw in theaters (twice); I'm waiting for the Criterion Edition to ship (May 22) before I pick up my own copy.

An author on tour to promote his book has an apparently chance meeting with a French woman (Juliette Binoche), and their encounter proves to be something far more than casual. He proposes in his book that a copy, an imitation, is as good as the genuine article, and while he appears to confine his thesis to works of art, what follows suggests that she may be testing to see how far it extends to life itself. The latest film by celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is also his first to be filmed outside of his native country. Starring Juliette Binoche (who took home the best actress award at Cannes for her stunningly enigmatic performance in this film), Certified Copy starts from a premise that promises an exotic love story, and gradually turns into a subtle and profound meditation on art, memory, truth, and identity.

To give a quick sense of the feel of this remarkable film I might suggest it combines the conversational intimacy of Before Sunset and the intellectual intrigue of Last Year at Marienbad. The problem is that comparison makes this seem like a derivative work, that merely copies elements of established works. It's not. Like all of the works I've seen by Abbas Kiarostami, this is a true original. Or if its a copy, it's a genuine copy. It's a fascinating film, that I've seen twice now, and that I look forward to watching again, since I got even more from it the second time. It's a densely layered film, where details refer to other details, and each calls up a range of themes and ideas, but where the intellectual intrigue is balanced by an emotional tension and resonance, and that wears its layers lightly, almost as if it were all improvised. It's both a delightful romance - that might be said to skip the romance, straight to the after of the happily ever after - and a subtle philosophical exploration of a wide range of fascinating themes.

By the way, here's what to expect when the Criterion edition ships:
-a new high-definition digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
-a new interview with director Abbas Kiarostami
-"Let's See Copia conforme," an Italian documentary on the making of Certified Copy, featuring interviews with Kiarostami and actors Juliette Binoche and William Shimell
Trailer
-New English subtitle translation
-PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Godfrey Cheshire

You thought you would be settling down to watch just another love story: distinguished, older English-speaking man meets younger, sexy European woman while on a trip to Italy, and romance follows predictably. Ostensibly, this is the way the movie begins; and you settle in, waiting for the first kiss, and waiting for the love story to unfold. But it does not unfold at all. Things just get strange and more complicated as the movie progresses. James Miller, a deeply cynical and emotionally cold writer, on a visit to Italy to promote his book, meets a charming French woman who wants to show him rural Tuscany, and to revisit the town where they were hastily married fifteen years ago.

There are differing opinions as to what exactly transpires in this film. Certainly it's open to more than one interpretation. One is that James and the woman (Binoche), although initially not married or even acquainted, "take on" the roles of estranged husband and wife. This interpretation seems very unconvincing to me, since there is no motive as to why they should do this, nor why James should treat this charming and attractive woman in such a shabby way, if they were just playing roles. If they are only playing at being husband and wife, then what is the point of the movie?

After viewing the film several times, it seemed clear to me that they had once been lovers, she had gotten pregnant, they had hastily married, then later separated from one another. The film (mostly) hangs together with this interpretation, but not entirely. There is one spot where James asks the woman "Where (or when) did you get married?", as if he has no idea that he is her husband. Also, James has no memory at all of their wedding night, or where they were married. Nor has he much interest in her young son. And he treats this woman like she is nothing to him. How or why does any man turn down the advances of a woman like this? This, it seems to me, is a movie about James and his deep emotional paralysis, more than about the woman or their marriage.

What we thought would be a gentle love story turns out to be a long, sad look at a disintegrating marriage. What we thought was the beginning of a love affair is really its bitter end. We never learn why there is this deep anger and cynicism in James, what devils haunt him, or what his wife has done to deserve his hateful treatment of her. All we know is that James wants nothing more than to get the hell out of Italy by 9 PM. At the end of the movie one may think or hope that James has finally come around, after his venomous outburst at the restaurant. Has he finally decided to forgive his wife, and give her his love again? It is left to the viewer to decide. Despite all its strangeness, I found the movie and the character of James deeply engaging. This is a long look at a love torn asunder by unknown betrayal; the aching story of a man unwilling to forgive and love.

Perhaps you remember the 1995 hit "Before Sunrise," with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, where a couple of young strangers spend an evening together in Vienna, mostly talking about life and relationships?

"Certified Copy" is a similar dialogue-driven film that takes place in a small village in Tuscany during the course of one day. It's the story of a middle-aged art dealer (Binoche) who invites a British author on tour (Shimel) for a day in the countryside. As the two visit the various museums, churches, and trattorias, and as their conversation progresses, we find there's more to the relationship than meets the eye, and from there the plot takes some completely unexpected turns.

Despite what the trailer makes you believe, this is not a romantic movie about seduction; it's an intelligent and philosophical film about how our expectations affect our perspective, about originality and point of view. It's also a daring puzzle of a movie, and it engages you in the game without you even knowing it.

Binoche is radiant in this film, showing emotions with every raised eyebrow, telling entire stories without saying a word. She actually puts a spell on you! And shifting effortlessly between English, French, and Italian, her charismatic persona drives this minimalistic film from one scene to the next.

Like a good piece of art, "Certified Copy" gives you plenty of room to make your own interpretations, and like a good brain game, it will make you think, a lot.

Marriage is a complicated thing and this movie does a good job of looking at a marriage that has fallen apart. Bad relationships make sad movies but such movies give thought to why relationships come apart. The movie is beautifully filmed in Tusacany. The acting was very well done. The script was well written. I think that you will enjoy this film and I hope that Amazon finds other wonderful movies that are as wonderful as this for their customers.

<strong>Copie Conforme</strong> (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)

Imagine <em>Saw</em> if it had been made by Béla Tarr.

Okay, I know I'm getting even more disbelieving looks than usual here, but let's face it: <em>Copie Conforme</em> is a Big Reveal movie, just as <em>Saw</em> is. Looked at in that regard, the ambiguity that so many people talk about pretty much goes away; there's a mystery to be solved here. The only difference is that it's not the characters who are trying to solve the mystery; they know everything, and because they know everything, they have no reason to explain it to themselves. We, the audience, are trying to work out the relationships here. And Kiarostami is, for most of the film, about as interested as the characters are in helping us work that out; in many of the movie's scenes, in fact, he is consciously obfuscating things, and the way the film is shot makes that all too plain. As to where the Tarr part comes in, aside from Kiarostami's wonderful soundplay and a few shots all to reminiscent of the Hungarian master, Tarr's movies, be they his shorter crime films (e.g., <em>The Man from London</em>) or his longer meditations on the fall of the Soviet Union (e.g., <em>Sàtàntangó</em>), the structure of every Tarr film is the same: languid save one moment of unadulterated violence.

The film opens with a talk at a university. Actually, the film opens with with the audience (both in the cinema and on the screen) waiting for a talk at a university. It is to be given by James Miller (William Shimell is his first big-screen appearance), a cultural historian who has wandered into the art world, according to his own later declamations, seemingly by accident. His book, which has the same name as the film, has won some sort of obscure prize, and he's giving the thank-you speech. Or he will, if he ever gets there. (This is important.) He eventually does show up, and launches into his speech, which he gives in a mixture of English and stumbling Italian (I assume it's meant to be stumbling, but I don't have nearly enough knowledge of what Italian is supposed to sound like despite my <em>giallo</em> fetish). As he's getting started, a woman and her son slip in and find their way to the reserved seating. This, we find out later, is Elle (Juliette Binoche), a local antiques dealer. She is unable to stay for the entire lecture, so she slips James' friend, the university professor who introduced him, her number and takes her son Julian (<em>Im Schwitzkasten</em>'s Adrian Moore) for a burger. The two of them have a conversation that seems mundane, but ends up perhaps provoking more thought than anything in the film. In any case, later that morning, Elle presumably gets a call from James, who shows up in her antique shop. She promises to show him something interesting if he's got the time to spare; he replies that he has to be back in time to catch a nine o'clock train. No problem, and they depart Arezzo for Lucignano, which we are told is half an hour away or thereabouts. They see what she has come to show him, but it's after that that things get interesting, as we start to question not the nature of their relationship, but the way Kiarostami has presented their relationship to us.

Not helping the matter is that Kiarostami, who also wrote the script, is involved in constant misdirection as to what the mystery even <em>is</em> (the question I hear most asked, and the one it was easiest to answer by halfway through the film, is "dis these people know each other before the movie started?"). Again, not that he hides this fact from us at all; this is "mystery" in its most existential form, and also again, there's no mystery in the film itself. Everyone there knows what's going on, even the people who have never met these folks before, including the proprietor of a local coffee shop (<em>Tea with Mussolini</em>'s Gianna Giachetti) and an older couple Elle ropes into a discussion on a statue in a little square in Lucignano (<em>La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie</em>'s Jean-Claude Carriére and <em>Micmacs</em>' Agathe Natanson). In case you haven't noticed, this movie has one hell of a cast, which makes it even more impressive that Shimell, who previously had acted in a few made-for-TV movies, holds his own against them. (Even more impressive is Adrian Moore, whose part is small, but wonderful.) But I digress. Kiarostami is using this to slap us in the face, as it were, with how we simply don't get it. (Don't worry, there's more to this tale than anyone else gets, either.) But the slap, as it did in his wonderful <em>Ta'm e Guilass</em>, comes with a velvet glove. After all, Kiarostami is doing his best to confuse you. Take the beginning of that car ride, while the two of them are still in Arezzo. There's a long, languid conversation, some joking. All the while they're driving through the narrow streets, and you can see the buildings on either side reflected in the windshield. The buildings on either side of the street are different, but constant, colors, so the view of James is always occluded by off-white, whereas the view of Elle is always occluded with a sort of terracotta yellow. (I wish I'd been paying enough attention to be able to make some salient comment on the changes in conversation when they pass into shadow.) This sort of occlusion is present throughout, as we often see the characters through, or in, reflections, both from glass (display cases, picture windows, etc.) and in mirrors. As well, remember I talked about Tarr and soundplay? There are times when we can't hear what James and Elle are saying thanks to the soundplay. The mike will focus on a presenter at a small museum talking about a piece of art, or a traveling accordion player (how Tarr is that?) will pass between the camera and the couple, and we will hear nothing of them, or the people they're talking to.

The mirrors are especially important in a movie where every shot is blocked with importance. While Kiarostami is interested in obfuscation, there's a point where you can't obfuscate any more. Ironically (and meant as such), the two times when our main characters are most naked is a long, stationary shot in a mirror. While I can't say more without spoiling it, the placement of these two shots is perhaps the most important thing in the film for figuring out the mystery (the solution to which is there for all to see in the film's final spoken line, by the way).

The one place it falls just shy of genius is in the conversation Elle has with Julian. Taken on its own, it is an excellent scene, full of the little details that make this movie wonderful. But in the greater context, it serves only to throw confusion onto confusion. It's the one place that Kiarostami's obfuscation becomes manipulation, and the scene--and the film--suffers for it.

Is that a reason not to see it? Of course not. Even Roger Ebert, whose distaste for Kiarostami is legendary (his reaction to <em>Ta'm e Guilass</em> started a friendly rivalry between Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum that continues to this day, and the first sentence of his review of <em>Ten</em> is "I am unable to grasp the greatness of Abbas Kiarostami."), gave the film three and a half stars, though the text of the review itself strikes me as lukewarm at best ("[f]or me, it is too clever by half, creating full-bodied characters but inserting them into a story that is thin soup."). This is another way in which Kiarostami reminds me of Tarr: even if you've no idea what's going on, the film is so beautiful, and the characters so intriguing, the movie's worth seeing. But unlike Tarr, whose movies are so often about nothing but the day-to-day life of his characters, Kiarostami does, in fact, have a Big Reveal. It's subtle enough, however, that even people who saw it and half-understood its significance often don't make the (to me obvious) final leap. Give it a shot and see if you hit the bullseye. *** ½

Certified Copy is Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami's first European film, and he has certainly succeeded in continuing a legacy of fascinating, intellectual cinema despite delving into foreign territory. In researching Kiarostami, I stumbled across the observation that his films tend to be insular and self-referential. Given my previous experiences with his work, namely the minimalist yet profoundly philosophical and formally unique Taste of Cherry (1997), I'm not surprised to find that Certified Copy lives up to this alleged attribute of the director. I can't say that I've seen a film quite like this, which appears at first to be influenced by the likes of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. But it expands and contracts and shifts as it moves along, ending on such a unique and somewhat perplexing (yet remarkably euphoric) note that all attempts at fitting Certified Copy into the history of cinema quickly become futile, that is unless you consider Kiarostami's oeuvre. It is then immediately surmisable that this lovely, confounding essay could only emerge from this decidedly singular artist.

The film opens in Italy, where British writer James Miller (William Shimell) is giving a lecture on his latest book, an exploration of the concepts of originality and authenticity in works of art. An unnamed admirer, played by Juliette Binoche, sits restless in the front row, distracted by the nagging of her son who is more interested in satiating his hunger than listening to Miller's theories. She is forced to leave early, passing along her number so that she might meet Miller at her antique shop where he will sign copies of his book. Once the two unite, we are swept into the sometimes uncomfortable cadence that characterizes the intersection of strangers. Eventually, it is suggested that they are actually estranged lovers of some kind, perhaps playing the role of a pair of people who have never known each other.

What we ultimately discover is not a romance but a sudden, perhaps jarring transformation within the confines of an incredibly specific discussion of whether or not there is such a thing as replication. Everything in life is a matter of perspective, and this idea plays directly into how the film is constructed and how it unfolds. The film making itself reveals early on that we are not to settle into anything or become familiar with anyone. As the antique dealer and the academic drive through town soon after connecting, we notice and are taken by the picturesque windshield reflections of a Tuscan town superimposed on unfamiliar faces, only to feel suddenly cheated somehow. Kiarostami places a slowly changing, physically beautiful wall between us and the protagonists, obfuscating our standard opportunity to visually engage with the main characters.

This is but one example of the ways in which the cinematic medium is uniquely employed to keep the audience on its toes, conjuring a curiosity as to which perspective is most important or most accurate. The curiosity does not cease, and that is Kiarostami's master stroke. Juliette Binoche in particular manages to occupy a multiplicity of emotional states that serve to underline Kiarostami's intentions with Certified Copy. Binoche performs this role like an actress at the peak of her talents, fully inhabiting each moment so that our suspicion that this narrative is absolutely real does not dissipate.

Kiarostami continues to suggest and hint until he finally pushes us into the perspective that we suspect must be true, an end result that hardly provides answers. Miller's ideas always populate their discussion, generating debates and drawing out emotions, but the expansion into the personal begins to add gravity. Through all of the playfulness and reconsideration, Kiarostami, his cast, and his crew achieve a deep sense of truth, a kind of emotional realism that only rings more clearly because it defies you to settle on a conclusion. Rarely do I come across a film that feels as much like a challenge as it does like a fresh idea, a quiet revelation that I very suddenly hoped would disappear behind the screen of intellectualism.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet despite the fact that I have a lot to say about this film; namely because the beauty this film possesses is almost entirely corroded by the spoiling of its unfolding plot. To say that this film is pure magic would be an understatement, for it is probably one of the most honest and poignant looks at relationships I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Taking a seeming chance meeting between an author and an art gallery owner and using it as a medium to enrich the audience with a breathtaking point of view regarding love, life and marriage; `Certified Copy' is simply flawless.

That gallery owner is Elle, played with natural charm and ease by the stunning Juliette Binoche (in possibly the finest performance of 2011). That author is James. James and Elle meet at a conference and come together for a day of sightseeing in beautiful Tuscany. They share a love of art, yet mixed feelings regarding the purity of said art. As the day unfolds, the contrast between authenticated art pieces and mere copies bleeds into life in general, as truths about Elle and James become manifest in slight yet overwhelming details. The concept of art imitating life is taking rather literally here, but not in the sense that one might initially expect. Instead, the film is filled with subtle comparisons that help highlight the true intentions of writer/director Abbas Kiarostami. With a deft hand (oh my, those soft directorial flourishes are magnificent), Kiarostami coaxes a beautifully delicate relationship between two very dynamic souls.

I don't want to give anything away!

I'll end by noting Juliette Binoche, because her performance is one of the best I've seen in years. The way that she completely bares her soul with such soft undertones is flawless. I love the way she is always reacting to what is going on around her. Her eyes are constantly reflecting her inner mood, even when her face remains stagnant. The `coffee shop scene' alone is a work of genius and she OWNS that scene with such heartbreaking realism. I love her naturalness. Binoche reminds me of my love for Kristen Scott-Thomas, another actress who just breathes such infectious charm into her performances. The way that Binoche can play with her character is compelling. I love how she shifts her moods with ease, never feeling out of place but always feeling genuine in tone. The final scene is a flawless depiction of her character's need to feel something nostalgic in order to justify her affections. She just wants to hold on with dear life.

I'll say no more; just watch this movie. It is so deeply effective and it sneaks up on you in more ways than one. It is a very fresh and original spin on the `relationship movie', and it certainly will remain one of the best films of 2011.

I can't say that I really understand the meaning of the film, and which of the apparent realities is the "true" reality. What at the end matters to me is the emotional build up that starts slowly and fully develops at some point with a burst (when she talks on the phone with her son while also taking french, for the first time, with him). I will certainly watch it again. This is one of the few movies really worth buying.

Ask questions. Find answers. Then more questions. More answers. It's a game that goes on as long as you want it to go on. You'll not come out with a truth and certainly not with a correct analysis. The more you probe, the more interesting it gets and if you want to rest and just watch, that's great as well. The characters are always interesting, changing and not changing, loved and despised, obvious and impenetrable. They are all of us and if you need answers to the dance of life, you'll be disappointed. But if you don't need to arrive at a certain conclusion and can embrace not-knowing, then this film will be wonder-filled.

As I write this, there are two other customer reviews of CERTIFIED COPY. I love it that one gave it five stars and the other gave it one star. I believe those are the only two honest responses to it. Depending on your point of view, it's either a masterpiece or it's some sort of hoax.

A female character called "Her" in the credits (Juliette Binoche) finagles a meeting with James Miller (William Shimell), a British author who has written a book arguing that one's subjective response to art is what gives it value. It doesn't matter if the art is a forgery or an original or a Coca-Cola sign: if you respond to it, it's art. (I am doing a fair amount of damage to his theory for the sake of brevity.)

Binoche and the author go for a drive in Tuscany, having a sort of "first date" conversation. When they arrive at a cafe, Miller excuses himself to take a phone call outside. The waitress addresses Binoche, saying she can tell Miller is a "good husband." Instead of correcting her, Binoche plays along, inventing an elaborate history for her and her "husband." When Miller returns, Binoche fills him in on the details of their sham marriage. There seems to be a period when they both play at being married.

Then, the marriage becomes very real, indeed. Binoche becomes emotional at Miller's extended absences from her and their son. He defends himself, not very successfully. The remainder of the film is a domestic drama between two characters with an actual shared history.

It may be the most daring narrative pivot since Bill Pullman woke up as Balthazar Getty in Lost Highway.

Back to the original point: is CERTIFIED COPY a masterpiece or a hoax? Well. It's a movie about art, and whether a forgery can have as much subjective value as an original. The film, then, is both original and forged. Which part is which? Does it matter?

(Well-played cameo by Jean-Claude Carrière, best known as the co-screenwriter of Bunuel's four final films. He's the chap at the fountain who gives marital advice to Miller.)