Copie conforme (2010) - film review

James, a fifty-something English writer, travels to Italy to promote his new book and give a lecture on the relationship between an original piece of art and its imitations.  Here, he meets a young French gallery owner and they spend a few hours together in San Gimignano, a small village near to Florence.  They enjoy each other’s company and appear suited for one another. But is this the real thing or a mere copy...?

In his first film to be shot outside his native Iran, veteran filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami offers an insightful exploration of the ambiguity of human relationships and persuades us that, as in the art world, it can sometimes be nigh on impossible to distinguish simulated experience from the real thing.  Copie conforme is a surprising departure for Kiarostami, who has spent much of the last decade working on documentaries and experimental short films, yet it bears many of his stylistic and thematic motifs, particularly the use of the long take and an aversion to using reverse shots in dialogue sequences.  Kiarostami’s flavour of mise en scène is as distinctive as that of any other great filmmaker and proves to be particularly appropriate for this film, a thought-provoking existentialist study hinging on the reality or otherwise of relationships.

The film concerns a middle-aged French woman and a slightly older English writer who meet, by chance, in sunny Tuscany.  Whilst they act as though they are strangers, something tells us that they already know one another.  There is more than an echo of Alain Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961) in what ensues.  The man and the woman could be a married couple who are attempting to revive their flagging union, or they could be total strangers playing out some bizarre fantasy as part of a mid-life crisis - we can never be certain which it is.  Some unintentionally stilted dialogue (which undulates haphazardly between three languages) adds to this sense of artifice and ambiguity and reminds us that, to a greater or lesser extent, all relationships are a kind of playacting.  Who is to say what is true and what is not?

In what is pretty much a two-hander, French cinema icon Juliette Binoche is paired up with the celebrated English opera singer William Shimell.  At first sight, the casting would appear to be eccentric but in fact it proves to be inspired.  As in her films for Téchiné, Kieslowski and Haneke, Binoche epitomises the enigmatic, indefinable modern woman, outwardly placid and desirable, yet inwardly so mysterious and troubled.  Shimell is just as unfathomable in his remarkable debut performance, evincing such diverse character traits that we can scarcely divine his true persona.  Both protagonists have an aura of unreality, as though each is afraid to reveal his or her own true self, and instead resorts to a subtle game of subterfuge, going through the motions of a relationship like actors in a play, seemingly content with their imitation of life.

Copie conforme is a film that is both intensely beguiling, through Kiarostami’s sheer cinematic artistry and the charismatic performances of his lead actors, and delightfully frustrating.  Like Resnais’ film, it is left to the audience to drawn their own conclusions as to the nature of the relationship between the two protagonists.  Like all great works of art, the film can be read in many ways and enjoyed at many different levels.  It is both a mystery and a love story, indeed a dark parody of a love story.  There is also something deeply unsettling about what the film shows us, since it compels to reflect on our own relationships with others.  How certain can we be that these are real or simulated?  Indeed, how well do we know ourselves...?

© filmsdefrance.com 2010

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