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Film: ABC Africa
Year of production: 2001
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 84 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran
Language: Persian/English
Review by: Paul Kelly
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. In 2000, Abbas Kiarostami, one of Iran's foremost filmmakers, received a fax from the UN's International Fund for Agricultural development. In it, he was asked to visit the Uganda Woman's Effort to Save Orphans charity in order to make a documentary about their work. After going to the area to scout for locations, Kiarostami and his assistant Seyfolah Samadian decided to put together the raw footage they had shot on hand-held cameras. ABC Africa is the final result of their work.
The Ugandan Woman's Effort to Save Orphans is a charity which works with children and teenagers left without parents as a result of the AIDS epidemic which still exercises its stranglehold over the continent. By a sharing of money and business incentives, these woman take orphans into their care and help them to live a normal life, as well as providing for themselves.
We learn little about the inner workings of the charity because sit-down, one on one interviews are not in the nature of the film. ABC Africa is an example of pure, minimalist documentary filmmaking. There is no structure to what Kiarostami and his assistant set out to do, no agenda on their minds as they chat with the locals. What results from this is a film which may lack the kind of hard hitting journalism that we are accustomed to seeing in tales from some of Africa's poorest countries, but one which offers a candid insight into a way of life we cannot possible fathom…
As hard hitting and insightful as much of the footage is, much of it is far too long and the film could have done with an awful lot longer in the editing suit. Here a director has a chance to make a film that will really get people thinking about an important issue that is too often overlooked. But instead of strongly focusing on the important points at hand, Kiarostami allows his camera's attention to wander into crowds of dancing children or clouds drifting by for periods of time - so long that it is easy to forget you are watching a film. Much of what takes an hour and twenty minutes could have been distilled into a far more impactful ten minute promotion for the charity.
This is a shame because there are moments when the fly-on-the-wall immediacy of the film is striking. This is particularly true of a visit to a centre which cares for AIDS victims, where the gaunt, hopeless and helpless faces of young and old alike make their way across the screen in a solemn procession, before a nurse is shown removing the body of a child with a blanket and a cardboard box with an efficiency which is as haunting as it is deeply sad. The style also works during an impromptu meeting with several families living in one shared house with open windows and doors; the happy dancing feet of the children and the patter of the rain outside working in harmony, reminding us that there is hope even in places seemingly void of it at first glance.
These moments are exceptions in Kiarostami's film, however, and do not do enough to lift the rest of the film, which feels like being forced to sit and watch a friend's holiday videos; undoubtedly interesting to have made and important socially, but unforgivably boring to watch. I use the word unforgivable because it seems to me that having the opportunity to make a film about people who deserve our help for the great work that they do, and failing to portray their story in a way which is interesting to watch, is just that. It's all very well to enjoy looking at the smiling faces of these children on film, but if Kiarostami had made a more watchable, structured film, he could have done a lot more to keep those faces smiling. This is not to question his motivation, he certainly made ABC Africa for all the right reasons, but the fact remains that Abbas Kiarostami is a talented and experienced enough filmmaker to have done far better with the chance that he was given.
Undoubtedly a film needed to be made to share the great work that Uganda Woman's Effort to Save Orphans does, but perhaps Abbas Kiarostami was not the man to make it. What should have been one of the most impactful documentaries of its day is rendered almost unwatchable by the director's refusal to structure the film even slightly.
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Film: The Wind Will Carry Us
Year of production: 1992
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Behzad Dorani, Noghre Asadi, Roushan Karam Elmi, Bahman Ghobadi, Shahpour Ghobadi
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian
Review by: Tim Molton
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. This 1999 Iranian production by Abbas Kiarostami references the poetic works of the controversial Forough Farrokhzad and contemplates the relationship between life and death. The Venice Film Festival Golden Lion nominee and Grand Special Jury Prize winner has drawn praise from critics worldwide, and saw Kiarostami hailed as one of the great directors at the turn of the millennium.
A group of purported engineers make their way to the small Kurdish village of Siah Dareh, though the motivation behind their trip is initially unknown. Towards the end of their scenic journey through the hills of Iran, the men meet a small boy, Farzhad (Farzhad Sohrabi), who offers them a place to stay and is immediately befriended by the focal engineer Behzad (Behzad Dourani).
Behzad tells young Farzhad that his presence there is to hunt for treasure, a rumour which is subsequently circulated by the young boy, but about which the locals still speculate. Behzad, however, spends his time wandering the village and observing the villagers, whilst persistently querying the health of a sick and elderly woman who resides in the village. The woman, we learn, is Farzhad’s 100-year-old grandma, and her health is a constant source of interest to Behzad and his crew.
During their time in the village, the engineers become agitated and impatient, and it becomes clear that they are awaiting the death of the elderly Mrs Malek. Behzad receives regular telephone calls from his Producer in Tehran - an increasingly frustrated woman – whose concerns are only for the time that it is taking for Mrs Malek to pass away.
Behzad, however, is determined to stay in the village until his duty is fulfilled, and by doing so opens himself up to a different world to that which he knows. A slow-paced and naturally beautiful town, which thrives on simplicity and collective responsibility, becomes his short term home and gives him a little more insight into the nature of life and death…
The opening scene sees the car of engineers driving down the long and winding road of a hill side, whilst asking one another for directions and looking out for landmarks to confirm that they are on the correct route. Straight away, Kiarostami fuses comic dialogue with an idyllic backdrop and symbolic references to great effect, setting the tone for the rest of the film. Utilising the flat roads around the mountains, he intimates that too often people are distracted off course by the appeal of a less challenging alternative.
Kiarostami is also quick to draw attention to the impatience of the engineers in the car, a trait which is maintained by the characters throughout the film, and which is a major theme of the feature.
The film is very documentary-esque in the way that life, lifestyles and scenery are so prevalently observed throughout. The beautifully simplistic way of life becomes ever more appealing as the picture develops, and the audience begin to appreciate the appeal of such a lifestyle.
But this film is as much about what we do see as what we do not, and it is this desire to see more which the director continually feeds throughout. Kiarostami intelligently plays on the viewers’ intrigue and impatience, often to the point of frustration, with the aim of educating his audience in the same way as his protagonist.
There are several key characters in this movie that are never actually introduced to the audience, and this serves to bolster Kiarostami’s message, as the film achieves its goal without having to display such characters. The viewer learns, in a sense, to take pleasure in what is available to them rather than to dwell on possibilities. For example, aside from Behzad, the engineers are never seen. Neither is Mrs Malek, the ailing old lady whose imminent death is seemingly the engineer’s only reason for being in the village. The audience are never permitted to view inside any of the village houses, and Youssef - the man on the hill to where Behzad must drive each time his mobile phone rings in order to get a signal - is also never seen. Youssef’s voice is only heard from below the hill, where he digs a ditch for telecommunications purposes and converses with Behzad. Neither do we see the face of the Youssef’s 16-year-old fiancé, Zeynab, during one of the film’s key scenes. During this scene, Behzad seeks milk from Zeynab’s cow and is taken down to a cellar where the young lady milks a cow whilst Behzad - somewhat condescendingly - recites poetry to her.
The poem recited is that from which the title takes its name, and is a relatively erotic poem. Behzad asks several times to see the young woman’s face, but to his dismay she does not hold up the lamp with which the cellar is lit. Again, the viewers are left to their own imagination, and encouraged to listen rather than only to see.
There are, of course, some wonderful and tranquil moments captured here, such as a turtle taking its time to make its way across the land and a large beetle pushing its earth along the ground. Nevertheless, the sound in this film is every bit as important as the aesthetic visuals, and Kiarostami’s soundtrack with the simple sounds of nature are what allow the audience to experience so much with far less visual information.
Ironically, it is the local doctor towards the end of the film who talks about not limiting himself - choosing to occupy his time observing life rather than surrounding himself with death. Perhaps, then, it is his words which echo most once the film has ended; do not wait for the promises of paradise to materialise in the afterlife, when so much beauty is before you in the present.
The doctor’s statement that nobody has been to this paradise and come back to tell us whether it exists is somewhat surprising and unexpected within a nation so devoted to religion. But this is a film which discourages intrigue and impatience and promotes acceptance, and the ability to slow down enjoy what is at hand.
A brilliantly filmed and wonderfully narrated feature, which expresses in so many different ways the beauty of life and the necessity for appreciation. This non-drama discourages expectation and anticipation, choosing instead to incite observation and fulfilment. While it may be a little slow-paced for many, those with patience and a penchant for the idyllic will be rewarded with an insightful and humorous piece of world cinema. TMO
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Film: Ten
Year of production: 2002
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 91 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Mania Akbari, Amin Maher, Kamran Adl, Roya Arabshahi, Amene Moradi
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France/Iran/USA
Language: Persian
Review by: Mark Player
Originally available through Optimum Home Releasing since 2003, Abbas Kiarostami's Ten is being re-released as part of Artificial Eye's new Abbas Kiarostami Collection. The DVD set also includes Ten's behind-the-scenes companion piece 10 On Ten, as well as Taste Of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, ABC Africa and Certified Copy.
Not to be confused with Blake Edwards' film of the same name, where Dudley Moore becomes romantically obsessed with a swimsuit-clad Bo Derek, Kiarostami's Ten is regarded as somewhat of a landmark in contemporary Iranian cinema. Taking a much loved narrative technique used by the director in many of his past works (conversations taking placed inside a car) to its logical limit, the film is set entirely in a single vehicle. Not only does it result in an intriguing character study of the car's owner, but offers an interesting evaluation of Iranian society from a usually repressed female perspective.
The character in question is a nameless female driver of the car (Mania Akbari), formerly divorced, but now remarried to another man. The film is divided into ten sections (hence the title), each one dedicated to a different conversation involving the driver and a passenger – her young son, Amin; her sister; an elderly religious woman; a prostitute hitching a lift; and a friend with a complicated love-life – as they travel through the crowded streets of Iran.
The passengers confide their frustrations with the driver, discussing their role and identity (or lack of) in a society where women are best neither seen nor heard. Gradually, we also start to learn things about the driver; chiefly: how her divorce and subsequent second marriage has affected the relationship with her 8-year-old son...
Using non-actors, set in a single location (albeit a moving one) and taking full advantage of the flexibility offered by digital camera equipment, Ten is about as low-key as an internationally released film can get. The entire production consists of two cameras fixed onto the dashboard, one pointing at each front seat. Indeed, the film feels somewhat paradoxical in nature: a work from one of Iran's most revered auteurs that in actuality, considering the nature of the production, had very little input from him. Much of the dialogue was improvised and the characters were partly based on the people that played them; for instance, the driver and her son in the film are also mother and son in real life and much of their ensuing tension stems from real traumas.
The performances, then, if they can be called such, are very good; evoking a candid, fly-on-the-wall naturalism that was undoubtedly the film's intention. The real meat lies in the verbal confrontations between the driver and her son, with the precocious Amin (Amin Maher) making for a formidable sparring partner; challenging his mother's desires for an independent lifestyle in the face of marital and parental commitments as well as society's wish for quiet conformity. Some of his chauvinistic tirades last up to fifteen minutes; the majority of which captured in a single shot, but not necessarily in a single take, however. The splicing together of multiple takes from the same angle is very slight, yet noticeable upon closer inspection, but the performances remain impressive nonetheless.
Another interesting facet to the performances is the amount of time that they're visible on screen. Kiarostami has chosen a very careful and unhurried editing pace, meaning that the film will play out for several minutes before cutting to the other person in the conversation, except for the segments involving the old woman on her way to the Mausoleum for prayer and the prostitute, where Kiarostami decides to never show them. Only a glimpse is afforded to the latter, as she stands on a street corner with her back turned to camera in the only shot of the film that's not inside the car.
Whilst there isn't a plot in the traditional sense, that's not to say that the Ten is about nothing. It’s a look at a small, predominantly female group, who feel they lack the ability to control their own lives and fulfil their own desires. Segments are introduced via numbered title cards that count from ten down to one - designed to emulate an old-fashioned film leader, but this has the appearance of a cheap video effect. On the bright side, those who find the following conversations to be tediously everyday – which, admittedly, they are – will easily be able to work out how many segments are left.
Naturally, Ten's defiance of standard cinematic conventions won't be for everyone. Also, one can't help but think that it would've made for a better video installation in an art gallery than a full length feature. The concept, albeit very pure and easily defined, feels as if it’s being stretched to fit the gap, as opposed to being pushed to its limits. However, while it could be argued that other recent national works, such as Marjane Satrapi's animated biography, Persepolis, look at the role of women in Iranian society in a more structured and entertaining way, it doesn't come close to the verity honesty that's evident here.
Ten is a fascinating exercise in filmmaking economy; however, such minimalism requires plenty of patience in order to fully appreciation the film. Some will be put off by the cheap, no-frills production; others will be captivated by its rawness. Either way, Ten remains a daring and challenging work in more ways than one. MP
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Film: Taste Of Cherry
Year of production: 1997
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi, Mir Hossein Noori
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian
Review by: Karen Rogerson
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. The most celebrated Iranian director of the late 20th century, Abbas Kiarostami’s film career began in the early 1970s. With a largely non professional cast, and shot almost entirely using a camera fixed in a car, Taste of Cherry deliberately retains the simplicity of the self-taught Kiarostami’s early works.
In the outskirts of Tehran, a man circles the streets in his Land Rover with apparent aimlessness, cut off from the hubbub of the crowds outside, ignoring appeals from labourers surrounding the car asking if he wants to hire workers. Eventually, the man’s purpose is revealed.
In the dusty hills circling the city, he has dug a grave in the hillside. That evening, he intends to take his entire stash of sleeping pills, lie down in the ground and wait to die. He’s trying to find a stranger who will agree to come to the grave the next morning and call out his name to see if he is still alive. If he is, the man must help him out of the grave; if he has died, the man must shovel dirt into the grave to cover his body.
The driver, identified only as Mr Badii, is offering a generous financial reward for this task. The men he encounters are dispossessed, immigrant workers earning meagre wages, scavenging rubbish heaps for plastic bags to resell, enduring the loneliness and tedium of guarding a deserted construction site, or far from home and drafted into the service of the army. But despite the promise of money, it’s no easy task for Badii to find someone to help him. His proposal is met with fear and unease from some, and compassion but moral objection from others.
The film takes place over the course of one day and its following, decisive night, centring upon Badii’s search and composed almost entirely of shots within his car and of its progress through the hills…
With no music, save for the opening and closing titles, the film is soundtracked by the gentle crunch of the car’s wheels on gravel as Badii cruises the bare roads of the barren, dusty hills surrounding the city. This monotony is broken by the occasional cry of a wild bird, the sounds of traffic, the racket of a construction site, or the far off barking of a dog. The colourlessness of the soundtrack is matched by the dusty bleakness of its landscape. Towards the film’s end, the sudden injection of colour in shots of trees turned to gold by the late evening light and the dramatic contrast of a thunderstorm over the hillside at night give a last minute suggestion of vitality which may or may not indicate some renewed attachment to life on the part of Badii.
The predominance of shots filmed on a fixed camera within the car is characteristic of Kiarostami’s filmmaking. He has spoken of the particular quality this device lends to personal interaction – “I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me...silence doesn’t seem heavy or difficult.” Badii and the strangers he talks to in the car always appear separately on the screen, emphasising the isolation between them, as well as the peculiar intimacy in which the dialogues take place.
Homayoun Ershadi’s performance as Mr Badii is grave and dignified, expressive of depression’s blank eyed lack of reaction to life - and to others - and the way it can obscure the possibility of hope. At the same time, Badii is able to empathise with the loneliness and aspirations of the men that he meets, even if these interchanges become increasingly mechanical and desperate as his search goes on. Abdolrahman Bagheri also shines as the harsh voiced but compassionate Turkish stranger who relates his own story of a confrontation with despair, a tale which has the quality of a fable in its simplicity and lack of moralising.
Taste Of Cherry examines one man’s dark night of the soul, and the lack of any explanation for Badii’s choice of suicide lends the film a sense of abstraction which makes the story that of any man battling between despair and the sense of life’s preciousness. A moral debate goes on in the film about the nature of suicide, whether self destruction is as great a sin as murder, or whether perhaps unhappiness itself and the pain it causes others is a greater wrong. The repeated appeal to the successive strangers for help has the quality of a religious parable, as each man’s response reveals his own beliefs about the nature of compassion for his fellow man, and whether the most compassionate act could be to help that man towards his own destruction with some dignity.
Despite the artfully crafted naturalism of its style and the realistic and quietly affecting performances of its cast, Taste Of Cherry is as bleak as its subject. Its repetitive shots of the Land Rover creeping along the hillside roads – in some cases, they look as if they have been literally reused – creates a mood of numb blankness. This is probably a deliberate device to evoke the colourless nature of the world seen through the viewpoint of Badii’s despair, but this visual blandness and the incredibly slow pace make the film hard to engage with, seeming longer than its hour-and-a-half duration. Taste Of Cherry’s creeping pace and uncomfortable silences – however deliberately meant – don’t do credit to the best scenes, which appear towards the film’s end (in which I don’t include its controversial final scene).
Taste Of Cherry is an artful piece of filmmaking, showcasing Kiarostami’s work’s characteristic qualities of naturalism, lack of sentimentality and a refusal to overegg the drama of a simple plot for the sake of manipulating the audience’s emotions. Cleverly constructed, it won critical acclaim and the Palme d’Or in 1997, but its cleverness doesn’t make it the easiest film to like. KR
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Film: 10 On Ten
Year of production: 2004
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian/English
Review by: Karen Rogerson
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. Award-winning director, Abbas Kiarostami delivers a masterclass in film direction, revealing the techniques underlying his artfully artless filmmaking. The documentary focuses on his 2002 work 10, a film which showcases the hyper realism which is Kiarostami’s signature style.
The documentary retains the same pared down minimalism as 10, being entirely shot within a car while Kiarostami addresses the camera directly. Delivered in the style of a lecture, Kiarostami’s talk is divided into ten sections, covering crucial aspects of filmmaking, such as the role of the camera, script, location, music, actors and director.
Kiarostami describes how he attempts to minimise the artificial impact of the technical traditions of filmmaking, techniques which can impair telling the naturalistic stories for which he is renowned. Digital camera or video is favoured instead of “artistic” cinematography. Music is rarely used, as this can manipulate the audience’s reactions to move or excite, like “picking pockets in the dark.” Kiarostami favours using a large number of non-professional actors, both to give flesh and voice to his characters and to avoid a contrived style of acting. Simple locations – his preferred one being the interior of a car – are used to allow the film to focus upon the characters without distraction.
Kiarostami is clearly keen that his role as director is not that of a critical and controlling presence, but one who enables his characters to tell their stories with the minimum of interference, without the distraction of superfluities, such as a literary narrative voiceover or unnecessary visual flourishes. In his conclusion, Kiarostami warns students not to disregard the formula of American cinema. Hollywood’s success has enabled American films to dominate cinema throughout the world, so despite his obvious distaste for the Hollywood formula, he advises that it shouldn’t be taken lightly or disregarded...
The documentary raises some useful insights into filmmaking. It’s difficult not to be aware, when watching mainstream cinema, of the methods which are often lazily used to manipulate audience reaction and distract from the absence of any real substance. Crassly overblown music makes films laughable when it’s disproportionate to the emotional impact of what’s actually going on onscreen. Big budget special effects don’t compensate for overlooking a decent script or a good cast. As Kiarostami comments, the absence of complicated technical equipment or special effects can free filmmaking from the shackles of capital and censorship, in an industry where production and distribution backing figure so largely that it determines whether a film gets widespread viewing, or gets made at all.
By contrast to the Hollywood machine, Kiarostami adopts an almost punk ethos in his filmmaking, where a lack of technical sophistication – all the skills needed to film are contained in a digital camera, he says – helps to minimise the artificiality of the process. This type of film undoubtedly has an important place and it’s a natural reaction to the out of control commercialism that’s produced so many sub-standard sequels and poor English language remakes of far superior European originals.
Interesting as Kiarostami’s ideas are, they overlook the fact that more metaphorical modes of filmmaking can also depict a kind of truth. Visual art and literature moved away from naturalism and linear narrative in the early 20th century to exploring different ways of representing reality – whether through the fractured planes of Cubism, the emotional intensity of Expressionism, or the interior dreamscapes of surrealism. Film became a popular medium at the same time, and filmmakers have never shied away from the opportunities it offers to present human existence in more experimental ways. Kiarostami’s recreations of everyday dialogue and situations may ape reality, but that doesn’t mean that the expressionism of directors such as Terence Malick or the surrealism of Luis Buñuel can’t be equally valid ways of expressing the experience of human consciousness. As Kiarostami admits, he is a self taught director, and his principles may not be for all, but they certainly contribute an important insight into his own methods for creating films with artistic integrity and serious intention.
An interesting watch for any film student, but a little dry for anyone who isn’t, Kiarostami talks intelligently and persuasively about the ethos behind his work. Any filmmaker, particularly those drawn towards the low tech and improvisational approach used by directors such as Mike Leigh, should find food for thought in Kiarostami’s methods, even if the pared down naturalism of his work may not be enjoyable for all audiences. KR
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Film: Certified Copy
Release date: 17th January 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Jean-Claude Carrière, Agathe Natanson, Gianna Giachetti
Genre: Drama
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: France/Italy/Iran
Like the vacant microphones which dominate the first still of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, one feels like a lonely figure waiting to be broached; waiting for an unknown address from an unknown addressee. Throughout the film this feeling never really dies, since its two principal characters each take it in turns to validate their case, like barristers squabbling in a courtroom. And yet Certified Copy, as dialogue-heavy and briskly meditative it is as an assessment of what constitutes a committed relationship, is as fluid and engaging a disquisition as Kiarostami has produced since 1997’s Taste Of Cherry.
Those microphones stand for James Miller (Shimell), who is attending a conference to promote, recite, and discuss his book, ‘Copie Conforme’ (Certified Copy). As he charms the Tuscan audience with his ambivalence and dry, pronounced British humour, he also draws apparent enthusiast Elle (Binoche) into his gaze. After she quarrels with her young son about the extent of her feelings for James, they later meet inside the boutique that she owns, and embark on a day trip to a handsome nearby town.
When journeying to get to this town, their conversation in the car extends to intellectual debate based on James’s book, the philosophy of which is framed upon cultural artefacts: what makes one artefact authentic and another false? They appear to have opposing views, his disillusionment with celebrity mirrored with her embracing of the PR world. And as Elle berates her own friend Marie’s simplistic attitude towards realness, he reveals a pedantic, self-righteous streak in endeavouring to fight Marie’s corner, claiming a final, elitist word on the matter.
The increase of tension flaunts a degree of harvested resentment; she’s frustrated, he’s resigned, and we aren’t quite sure until halfway through the film quite why they’re acting in this way...
Kiarostami uses the basis of a book about authenticity to show conflicting views about what a relationship and a marriage means; whether relationships are a product of natural chemistry, or whether we construct them to suit our own needs and plug inherent insecurities. The cavalier (anti?) charm about Certified Copy is that the subjects at the head of it, James and Elle, are either theorising their real feelings to accommodate the context of their exchange, or regressing to idealistic views of romance. Each grows more direct and assertive as they learn how much they can give of themselves without being stung, and the dynamic of their dialogue grows more tumultuous and unpredictable with every passing frame.
Certified Copy becomes a fascinating study of relationships, of how we use different modes of address to assert our point-of-view, and to justify ourselves to each other. Binoche and Shimell’s canny ability to draw you into their interplay makes the film vibrant and stimulating as an intellectual standoff, keenly mysterious in alluding to how emotional connection can devolve into figurative deadness. Even the quaint Tuscan hideaway that they peruse, with its dotted galleries and towering antiquity, becomes more of a weapon to the couple than a distraction - a method of instilling ideological sentiment into an emotional outlet that feels all but extinct. Art becomes the subjective canvas on which they coat their philosophies and belief systems, either through frustration towards the other, or to confirm to themselves that their lives aren’t an exception to a rule.
Binoche gives Elle startling complexity, flirting with the active courage of a teenager, and cunningly baying James to play along in her playground fantasy. She colours her impassioned silent hope with bitter self-realised existential crisis, painfully unable to quash the mentality that keeps her family in a tentatively ephemeral state.
Certified Copy recalls the recently-released Blue Valentine in its display of a disintegrated romance that may have failed through being formed upon impulsivity and false perceptions, but rather than show the car crash, Kiarostami’s film is more about picking up the pieces and confronting one’s own failures. Particularly in Elle’s case, it feels as though she’s trying to find if her grievous loss is genuine: whether she’s mourning for something that ever existed, or if it all began as a result of mismatched agendas.
Gorgeously crafted and expertly played, Certified Copy achieves profound worth at generating back-story through spirited cajoling, even as deeper motives lie underneath the exterior. Such is the depth of each exchange between James and Elle, one can see a single scene of this succeeding as a short film, with enough tiny inflections of hollow affection to allude to years of unspoken contempt. What begins as a resurrection turns into a fatal re-enactment, and finally a sorrowful lament. The film’s title says it all: never has an imitation of a marriage felt so true. CR
