Review: Certified Copy

Iranian writer-director Abbas Kiarostami (Close-Up, Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us) is the sort of filmmaker whose very name whets the appetite of cinephiles, whether they are admirers or detractors of his work.  His films reveal an auteur who is devoted to the humane potential of narrative cinema, but also unshakably committed to his own distinctive and unconventional style.  It is a style that divides critics and begs for contradictory adjectives: rigorous yet aimless; attentive yet agitated; poignant yet aloof.  Above all, an aura of the inscrutable suffuses Kiarostami’s work.  He meticulously employs the frame to circumscribe the perceptions of his audience, encouraging the viewer to reflect on what is unexplained and unknowable, both within the margins of the film and in the broader experience of life.

This stance reaches mature flower in Kiarostami’s latest film, Certified Copy, the director’s first feature created wholly within the mode of mainstream European cinema. What actually happens in the film is oddly unsettled, befitting Kiarostami’s fascination with enigmas.  This much seems reasonably certain: The film occurs over the course of a single, sun-kissed day in Italy, where British essayist James Miller (opera vocalist William Shimell) is introducing his new art theory book, also titled Certified Copy. A woman (never named, played by the unparalleled Juliette Binoche) attends part of the lecture with her son (Adrian Moore). Later, Miller accepts the woman’s invitation to meet at her antique shop, and the two ultimately spend the day exploring the Tuscan countryside together. She is visibly giddy but also touchy and brittle, while he is amicable, unflappable, and a little smug, in the manner of academics. Their conversation consists not of first date pleasantries, but of earnest, contentious debates about art, truth, family, and happiness.

Initially, Kiarostami’s characteristic long takes and conspicuous close-ups are utilized to establish a romantic tension.  The woman and Miller circle one another, their obvious mutual interest continually frustrated by awkward comments and especially by the woman’s quarrelsome phone conversations with her son. Eventually, it becomes apparent that the pair may have encountered one another years ago, and it is at this point that something seems to shift in the film’s reality. A café owner mistakes them for a married couple, and they play along, extending the ruse as they journey out into the street. Miller begins switching languages midstream, and their conversations hint at a (false?) history of neglect, anger, and disillusionment.

Kiarostami never establishes what exactly we are witnessing. Strangers engaged in an ambitious and precarious role-play? A married couple whose play-acting dissolves in mutual acrimony? Or a kind of naturalistic surrealism where reality shifts undetectably? Indisputably, the result is a defiantly challenging work, whose penchant for clearly signaling its thematic concerns—namely, the nature of truth and its relationship to worth—does little to unlock its mysteries. However, Kiarostami’s astonishing mindfulness for character, scene, and design cannot be reconciled with heedless obscurantism. In the past decade of cinema, few films have exploited the potential of the medium with such authority and dexterity, or have compelled the viewer to watch so closely. (Only Michael Haneke’s Caché springs to mind.) Critical in this respect are the cinematography by Italian veteran Luca Bigazzi and the editing by Bahman Kiarostami, the director’s son, each of which underline the film’s uneasy fusion of the savory, tart, and bitter. Undoubtedly, Certified Copy’s approach will perplex and frustrate some viewers, as it leaves even the fundamental facts of the narrative wide open to personal readings.  However, a little effort should be the gladly-paid fee for a work so painstakingly constructed, so aesthetically gratifying, and so deeply nestled in the tangled substrate of love.

St. Louis native Andrew Wyatt is the founder of the film aficionado website Gateway Cinephiles, where he has been an editor and contributor since 2007, authoring reviews, essays, and coverage of the St. Louis International Film Festival and Webster University Film Series.