hyped garbage

Good movie but grossly overrated

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I admit having not seen enough Kiarostami, but having seen enough to say that each his films are unique pleasures for a fan of cinema. No matter what the subject matter, he's always able, either explicitly or implicitly, to teach us something profound about art and filmmaking, which in my vocabulary is very close to "life" as a noun and "to live" as a verb.A truly international film, a French-Italian-Belgian production, Kiarostami's "Copie conforme" (2010) is his first dramatic film to be shot outside Iran. And the film is a delight. The first ten minutes are spellbinding, and foreground the film perfectly, offering not only really substantial intellectual stimulation (intellectual here, unfortunately, as an expression, seems to undermine all the other words) but hints at what's going to happen later on. The copy as important as the original.Some scenes are framed as paintings before closeups. The sense that everything is not as it seems soon settles in. And when the shift occurs, what an amazing moment! We lose our place, we swerve, the film becomes a different entity, a stranger that has been masquerading as a friend or a friend who's masquerading as a stranger.And Juliette Binoche! She's like Gong Li, Madhabi Mukherjee, Monica Vitti and Hara Setsuko, all genuine jewels in the art of acting, breathing humanity, able to carry the weight of the narrative and dress it up in an emotional context. Hint at that which is not seen, make meaningful that which is. William Shimell is great, as well, and it's amazing to think it's his first role. Kiarostami's style is effortless, smooth and rhythmic, the images dance with each other. And this film is a dance I wouldn't want to miss.

This is actually a totally different approach to cinema. Is it original? We wouldn't know, but it is definitely great. There are various ways of approaching this film. There is a lot of philosophical questions being raised and answered partially or fully through out the film. One way I like to look at this film is as two journeys with no definite separating point. Somewhere at the middle of the film, the relationship between the two characters change so we get to look at the things in life (art) in a different way. In the first half, you see a happy male who is satisfied with his being while in the second half, he is someone who has been married for 15 years, and unsatisfied with his state of being. The lady is more satisfied in the second half despite being emotional and vulnerable. There is a serious philosophical discussion about what is the right way to approach things. In the first half, the independent man doesn't care about the consequences of actions in general. He thinks things are just the way they are and we should not try too hard to change it. In the second half, he starts acting exactly opposite to his own earlier philosophy as the lady takes control in a socially acceptable relationship. It was interesting to see that the director used the term Mise' en Scene to credit himself at the end as this film does not fall under the Hollywood definition of drama.

It's no coincidence that Kiarostami chose Italy as his filming location (apart from an unobjectionable desire to spend some time in Tuscany): It's another replay of the themes of Pirandello, and, in particular, the ones we find in Pirandello's plays such as "Six Characters in Search of an Author,", "Cosi' e'(se vi pare)" ("That's the way it is--if you think so"), and "Il giuoco delle parti" ("The 'Let's play a role' Game"). In all of these works we get a vision of life which suggests that life itself is just one big game of role-switching, with all that that suggests about the illusiveness of reality. Nothing is as it seems, and we begin to suspect that it's a fruitless endeavor to seek out that "true" or "authentic" self which undergirds all the "certified copies" in play throughout our lives. And just as in Pirandello's plays, so too with Kiarostami we get the dramatic denouement: What is initially playful repartee gradually takes on the look of a high-stakes game and eventually careens wildly out of control.

While the movie poses a few interesting questions along the way (the one alluded to by the title being one of them), it overpowered me with its sheer contempt for the rational. I believe that if the movie made sense, all of a sudden it wouldn't be considered "good" by its admirers. Open-endedness can be a powerful artistic tool in skilled hands, but this movie is open wide from one end to the other. Married? Lovers? Kinky sadists? Divorced? Make up your own story because the director is not. Nor does he give you consistent material to work with, you'll need to do some heavy editing if you want your story to hold water. Exhausting.