Juliette Binoche and William Shimell in Certified Copy

A copy certified by whom?

Certified Copy is the well-known Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's first film shot outside Iran. "The cleverest thing about" it, J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote last summer, "is that it's a 'certified copy' of a European art film." I'm not so sure that's clever, or if so that cleverness is such an important value, but it's that - an imitation of a European art film -- with a vengeance. It is shot not just in Italy but in the part of Italy art film fans like best, Tuscany, and with a beautiful and famous French actress, Juliette Binoche. And it had its debut at the chief showcase of European cinema, the Festival de Cannes, May 2010. Certified Copy, which itself may be real or a sham, approaches its material coolly. With hints of romance and suggestions of Brief Encounter and Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, it’s ultimately not a romance so much as a puzzle, warmer and more intimate than Resnais’s 1960 Last Year at Marienbad but not as beautiful and enigmatic.

A man and a woman meet. The lady, it turns out later, runs a discreet antique shop, but one populated by copies of authentic sculptures. The man, we learn right away, is an English writer visiting to promote a book whose thesis is that a good reproduction, a "certified copy," of an art work is as valid and can give as much pleasure as the real painting, sculpture, or print. The film shows him giving a talk and book signing, which the lady (and her rather witty young son) attend, but the film doesn't go into details about this theory of the high value of copies, which seems unlikely to hold up to scrutiny (or get published, unless it were one of Alain de Botton's flights of whimsy). This gentleman, who plays at being her husband or might actually be her husband playing at playing at it, is played by William Shimell, an opera singer in real life, though not a famous one, and thus perhaps only an ersatz actor. Perhaps he was chosen because he would not be quite convincing. Or perhaps he was chosen unwisely, simply because he has a distinguished looking face.

Biniche, known only as "she," attends the reading and book signing by James Miller (Shimell), and then gets him to sign some copies and takes him on a car ride. This ride may allude consciously to Kiarostami's Cannes Golden Palm winner (1997) A Taste of Cherry or his later Ten (2002), or just illustrate his fondness for staging scenes in cars. (He has said that he and his wife have enjoyed picking people up in their car, like a taxi, in Teheran, and insisted that a car interior is as valid a place to shoot as a room.) Miller and "she" elect to play at husband and wife and then gradually begin acting like a real couple, believing their make-believe. One then begins to wonder if this is one of those films where a real couple pretends not to know each other in order to add spice to their relationship, as in Pinter's The Lover.

The format, anyway, follows a walk-and-talk romance such as Linklater's talking real-time romances set in Europe, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. The latter begins the same way, with an English-speaking author presenting his new book to a European audience and met by a very interested French woman who arranges to spend some private time with him before he must fly home. Shimell and Binoche haven't the chemistry of Hawke and Delpy, nor the fresh youthful interest that the couple had in the original Before Sunrise, or the history that first film provided to the acting couple's return performance in Before Sunset. All that warmth is lacking in Shimell and Bnoche. But neither are they meree elegant mannequins like Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, and Sacha Pitoëff in Marienbad. This isn't merely an intellectual (and aesthetic) exercise, though its issues never quite seem to matter either, nor does its inexplicable bickering have hints of passion and menace as they would, say, in dialogue written by Harold Pinter. Perhaps -- and this has been suggested -- Kiarostami means this as an indictment of the traditional European art film, rather than a homage to it. But if that is true, then in being led along for an hour and a half, are we not being condescended to?

The game really gets going when "she" and Miller go to a cafe where the proprietor, a middle-aged lady, speaking to "her" in Italian while Miller is in the street taking a call, assumes they are married. "She" (Binoche) takes this idea up with enthusiasm when Miller returns to the cafe. He follows somewhat unwillingly. Their pretense of being married increasingly hinges on bickering. The more they bicker, the more they seem married, and tired of each other.

The film toys elegantly with the audience, presenting a couple who may or may not be a couple, and interweaving its general themes of the genuine and the sham. It is a glossy, pleasantly rambling intellectual exercise, a cosy Marienbad shot in a nice car and an espresso shop (and the street and a restaurant), maintaining its puzzlement to the end and putting Binoche through her paces. Alternately stiff and awkward and relaxed and natural in French, Italian, and English, she goes through her thespian paces so well she received the Best Actress Prize at Cannes for her efforts. The weakness of the performance is that Shimell's isn't as good (everyone needs good backup) and the skill of it suggests all too obviously the thing film actors must so often do: plunging into a scene they don't really understand and making it look convincing. Is this a performance, or a long audition? Does this prove Kiarostami's ability to make a European art film, or his inability or unwillingness to produce an authentic, emotionally committed one?

The film offers hints of (somebody's) quarrelsome marriage along with the weariness of a long afternoon, but doesn't otherwise develop emotional depth. What it does do is make you pay close attention to the dialogue, to offer fodder for the post-viewing debate. Is this as Hoberman says, a "certified copy" of a European art film? Then it is presumably certified by the Cannes jury? What is Kiarostami saying about copies, though? Or about the originals, for that matter? This is interesting, and may provide fodder for re-watching. After all, Last Year at Marienbad was pretty annoying too -- and endlessly discussed. Perhaps this will be too. But remember: this isn't an original; it's a copy -- even if certified (by somebody).

I reviewed Certified Copy/Copie conforme earlier as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center (this is a new comment). As mentioned, the film premiered at Cannes. It opened the next day, May 19, 2010, in Paris, and two days later in Italy. It opens theatrically in the US in March 2011. It is the closing night film for the San Francisco Film Society's French Cinema Now series, shown 7 pm and 9:15 pm at the Landmark Embarcadero Cinema on Nov 3, 2010.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.