Certified Copy (**1/4)

The minimalist Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami uses his first feature shot outside his home country to examine the meaning of “original” in art. One of the two main characters has written a book questioning why we want art to be original at all. If we like a painting, why does it matter if it is a duplicate? Discuss. And off we go as the English author (opera singer William Shimell) spends an afternoon with a French antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche), in Italy. The woman has a young son, who in one of the earliest scenes badgers his mother for french fries and generally tries to push her buttons as they sit down for a bite. Their conversation exhibits a playfulness nearly absent from the rest of the movie, which, plotwise, simply involves a man and a woman driving through Tuscany to a quaint town, walking, sitting, and, above all, talking.

Unlike many of Kiarostami’s other films, it isn’t quiet and contemplative. Binoche flutters effortlessly between French, Italian, and English, while Shimell has an easier time, as the author doesn’t speak Italian. Despite the location shooting, even the scenery takes a back seat to the dialogue. While they drive through the countryside, Kiarostami has the camera focused on the windshield with the lines on the road reflected between their faces, a metaphorical dividing line made literal.

The discussion of art flows into the personal, but in an abstract way. The last, I don’t know, 40 minutes of the movie are an extended extrapolation of a mildly amusing segment in which a café owner misunderstands the relationship between the two. This goes on far past the point where it would seem natural. Anyway, if you want to watch a couple of people have a pretend argument for half an hour, this may be your film. Maybe it’s a real argument along with the pretense, but it doesn’t matter. There is nothing that explains why these near-strangers who don’t seem to be having a good time together keep at it. If I were either one, I would’ve gotten in the car and driven back. Any movie is a pretense of reality, but this never lets you forget it.

IMDB link

viewed 10/16/10 at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/16?/10