"It's not very simple being simple" observes a British author and art critic (William Shimell) as he drives to a small Tuscan village with a woman (Juliette Binoche) who may or may not be his wife not all that long into Abbas Kiarastomi's wondrous Certified Copy, the director's first feature directed in the West and his second made outside of his native Iran. It's a sentiment that may reflect the concerns of the celebrated filmmaker, who labors here under something that resembles the self-reflexive, dialogue-heavy, improvisatorial dramas that can be found in the more independent distribution corners of American and France. Indeed, Certified Copy is the first of Kiarastomi's films that feels as if the director's vision shares some attributes with other artists.
That said, to suggest that the director has been making "pretentious" films purposefully would be deeply cynical and misguided. Sure, the 6:30 PM screening of a restoration print of Kiarastomi's masterpiece, Close-Up, didn't sound as tantalizing as a trip to see How to Train Your Dragon to my parents, but for a great deal of people, the philosophical and filmic jungle gyms offered by films like Close-Up are enjoyed just as giddily as the aerial maneuvers of those lovable winged beasts. From what I have seen of Kiarastomi's oeuvre -- four of his features and three of his shorts in total -- the problem is not that the director is trying to bore, talk over, or intellectually bully the audience but that neither his framing nor his narratives depend on familiarity. For audiences that are displeased when their pre-conceived expectations of a movie (often based on trailers) are not fully met, I suppose it makes sense that Kiarastomi would be so thoughtlessly dismissed as a bitter misanthrope.
Love, sincerity, emotional confrontations and genuine humor are not absent from Kiarastomi's work. In Certified Copy, they come in forms that may seem vaguely familiar on the surface -- but underneath, ideas of performance, direction, and emotional honesty writhe like pink earthworms in a bed of soil. Not completely unlike Richard Linklater's surpassingly graceful Before Sunset in its structure, the film opens with James (Shimell) speaking about his eponymous book, which poses the idea that often the copy of an artwork can often be just as invaluable as the original; as might be expected with the constant use of mirrors and glass panes, reflections pop up constantly, especially in the dialogue. During the reading, an unnamed woman (Binoche) hands the writer's friend a card, which seems to have directions or an address scribbled on it, seeing as James later meets up with her at her antique shop and then agrees to take a trip with her to a small village to see a museum, get a cup of coffee, and have a quiet dinner.
The film is all conversation, and yet what they have to say seems to be a constant undercurrent, a part of the rhythm section even. Long diatribes on originality, married life, family, art, and romance, spoken in Italian, French and plain old English, pepper the car ride and the long walk around Lucignano, a town known as a tourist haven for married couples. In fact, Binoche, who won Best Actress honors at last year's Cannes, and Shimell are themselves a constantly evolving and devolving copy of those happy married couples, their performances branching off, morphing, and crashing gloriously with the same ease the creatures of the spirit world passed in and out of the material world in Uncle Boonmee. But this deeply "pretentious" dialogue that roams on throughout the movie's 105-minute runtime seems to come secondary to gestures, inflections, reactions, facial contortions and chiefly, yes, movement within Kiarastomi's utterly unique framing. It's a good reason why a scene of Binoche putting on lipstick and trying on earrings in the bathroom of a local trattoria is as lively, distinct, and lovely as any scene in which these two people are conversing.
A highbrow romantic drama? An advanced, elongated acting exercise? Like fellow Cannes award winner Uncle Boonmee, it seems pointless and even crude to try to tease "meaning" from Kiarostami's film. This ensures that the film will never look the same, no matter how many times you might revisit it and attempt to follow its maze of cerebral pathways. Indeed, one could say that the film merely greets the viewer with the eternal mysteries of a man and a woman simply interacting with one another.
All this may make Certified Copy sound theatrical. On the contrary, it is a uniquely cinematic landmark: its success is wholly contingent on its nature as a film. In fact, I couldn't help but think of a high peak of French cinema, Jacques Tati's Play Time, in the way it constantly inverts its medium. But to compare Certified Copy to other masterpieces is ultimately a fruitless endeavor, as its considerable delights, ideas, and emotions come from a creative impetus that may resemble any number of movies, but is essentially unplaceable.
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