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As resistant to facile interpretation as any of his other work, Kiarostami's first narrative effort in years is also his first made outside Iran and his first film with a bona-fide movie star Juliette Binoche, who was honored as Best Actress at the Festival de Cannes, where the film premiered last May.
Binoche plays a French-born gallery owner who encounters an English author (opera singer William Shimell, appearing in his first film role), who has come to Tuscany to promote his book on originals and copies in art. His thesis is that a good reproduction can be as "authentic" as the original. Their encounter isn't really a romantic comedy, but rather an always-playful glance at how men and women relate to each other. And, as so often in the work of this always fascinating director, alert viewers may find themselves questioning the very nature of the relationship of the film's two characters.
At one point, they visit a café whose proprietor takes them to be a couple. Soon enough, they find themselves conversing as though they are; they even visit a hotel she identifies for him as the place they spent their honeymoon. As the writer comments at one point, "We make a good couple, don't we?" Are they a couple -- or a certified copy of one?
Binoche plays a French-born gallery owner who encounters an English author (opera singer William Shimell, appearing in his first film role), who has come to Tuscany to promote his book on originals and copies in art. His thesis is that a good reproduction can be as "authentic" as the original. Their encounter isn't really a romantic comedy, but rather an always-playful glance at how men and women relate to each other. And, as so often in the work of this always fascinating director, alert viewers may find themselves questioning the very nature of the relationship of the film's two characters.
At one point, they visit a café whose proprietor takes them to be a couple. Soon enough, they find themselves conversing as though they are; they even visit a hotel she identifies for him as the place they spent their honeymoon. As the writer comments at one point, "We make a good couple, don't we?" Are they a couple -- or a certified copy of one?