Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, France/Italy/Iran, 2010, 107 mins, in English/French/Italian with subtitles
Cast: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
Review by Carol Allen
This is one of those films where none of the characters, apart from the male lead Shimell as James Miller is given a name. The leading female role is listed just as She (Binoche). The film's initial scenes involve complex discussion about the moral, emotional and artistic value of a copy of a piece of art as compared to its original. All this, plus the enigmatic nature of the relationship between the two main characters, might lead you to think this is going to be one of those incomprehensible, arty films, which takes pleasure in puzzling its audience. On the contrary it develops into a lucid and engaging dissection of the nature of marriage and the difficulty of keeping such a relationship alive.
Shimmel, the aforesaid James Miller, is an English writer, who has just written a book about the issue of copying and art and is in Tuscany to give a lecture about it. Binoche plays a woman who appears to be his greatest fan. She takes him for a drive to a beautiful little village, which is a favourite venue for weddings, where they are surrounded by starry eyed newly weds, along with older couples returning to the scene where they themselves tied the knot. But in the course of this couple's encounter, we begin to realise that they are not in fact strangers but know each other. They may even be married to each other and playing out this scenario in an attempt to put right the problems that have arisen in their fifteen year marriage.
The film is beautifully acted by Binoche, as a woman feeling insecure and neglected by her husband, who puts his work before his marriage, and Shimmel, a renowned opera singer, making his feature film debut here. He has a good speaking voice, a strong screen presence and shows himself to be a sensitive actor. There are also lively supporting performances, particularly from Gianna Giachetti as a café owner, who is a positive fount of traditional female wisdom. The different languages are well used as an effective dramatic illustration of the deeper communication problems of the main characters she is a French woman long resident in Italy, they speak English together, though it turns out he can speak French and there are times when the film is almost a dramatised dissertation on the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus theory.
The Binoche character sometimes becomes a little irritating in her extreme neediness, weighting one's sympathies towards James, despite his character being in many ways the emotionally re press ed and cold Englishman of European and American cliché. But the film does have the virtue of taking a well worn subject and giving it an original and interesting treatment. Certainly not a certified copy.
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