Certified Copy - "Copie Conforme"

Cecil says: I always like Juliette Binoche. I can watch her for hours and never tire of her. So an intense film focused on the intense relationship between Binoche and ‘James’ (William Shimell), with lots of camera shots focusing straight onto Binoche’s face, was bound to keep me happy. Having said that, I think if her part had been played by any other actress, I’d have quickly tired of this film.

Isn’t it funny how, in the same way that Hollywood plots become more and more complex as audiences get wise to the ‘usual’ thriller plot, French films so often descend into more and more multi-layered intellectual game-playing?

How dull was the opening scene of this one? We hear far too much of the Englishman’s lecture to the small-town Italian audience on a pretty obscure, arcane subject: on the importance of originality in art or whether a good copy is not also as important for the story it tells.

Of course, this is probably some scene-setting allegory for the couple’s relationship? Is it real or a fake? Is the kid his or someone else’s? Does it matter that some people they meet think they are married? What is real?

I’m afraid it all gets a bit too deep for my liking, but French films like this so often do. If there’s one nation’s films that can make me feel like a philistine, it’s the French!

Basically, their relationship is a mess, but of course we aren’t allowed any normal story-telling which ends with a clear conclusion on whether it survives or ends; oh no that would be far too conventional for a film of this genre.

I think the only scene I really liked, apart from the lingering close-ups of JB, was where they meet the middle-aged couple in the square. He gives James some friendly advice: put your arm round her, it’ll solve all your marriage problems.

And the wife of insightful man does something interesting which happens so often in real life (like in photos where the fixed smile is so unnatural and the smile ‘after’ the shot is taken is often the true smile): she is asked for her reaction to a statue in the square and replies with something very instinctive and insightful, but when asked to repeat this for the art historian James, she goes all technical, pseudo-intellectual and it sounds awful. Bit like this film, really.

**.5

Bea says:

For the first third of this film I didn’t really warm to either main character – I found their play-acting at being married irritating (why would anyone who didn’t know each other well do that?). When it slowly became apparent that they were, actually, married I became more interested in their relationship issues and dilemmas, but remained vaguely irritated by their earlier play-acting at not being married! I am not sure if this was the reaction the writer and director was trying to elicit from their audience – maybe.

The themes of this film (real-ness, fakery, truth, and simplicity as opposed to complexity) are interesting enough but the film takes it pretty slowly and is very dialogue-heavy with little action. It’s not a bad way to while away a late afternoon (as we did), but we had just done a pretty strenuous coastal hike followed by tea and cakes, and I was feeling rather sleepy and relaxed with lots of endorphins – I would really have preferred something a bit more positive and hopeful on the nature of marriage and relationships. Perhaps I’ve been living in America for too long now, but I found this rather a downer.

**1/2