★★★★This film is a certified, leisurely art movie that’s heavy on dialog and whose actions carry double meanings. The film is so deliberate and staged that I don’t think it’s going to be on a lot of people’s fav list, but I liked it a lot.
At the film’s core is the notion of original and copy and the question of the value of the copy. If that weren’t Derridean enough, a lot of the dialog between the two main characters, Elle and James Miller, seems suspended with uncertain significance. Is theirs is a real (original) marriage or a staged, simulated (copy) one, a game they are playing? And if theirs is only a copy, the film gets at the point that copies have value; James Miller expresses his respect for Elle's sister, who's happy with whatever she has whether it’s an original or a copy. And the wonderful scene in the Tuscan cathedral visually calls into question "original", too, with couples throughout the building happily getting married, replicating marriage in the background of our two main characters; by this point, the notion of original or copy is moot….any “original” marriage is lost and/or irreplaceable. It’s a fabulous scene as the two leads play their way through their marriage(?) among all the other replicating ones. The film eventually lands on the point that a marriage is just a marriage, original/real or copy/unreal.
Certified Copy also suggests another original/copy duality: cinema and reality. Like the other film I saw by Kiarostami recently, Close-Up, this film demands the viewer acknowledge he’s watching a simulacra of reality and not reality. As the two characters drive away from Elle’s house, the severe reflections on the windshield call attention to the fact that we’re watching a film and not a reality as Hollywood film language would express it. Later, at the restaurant, Elle looks right at the camera, right at us, and talks to us as though we were James. Ditto when she’s in the bathroom in front of the mirror later. These are two of the most uncomfortable scenes I've sat though in a movie in awhile. Added to those flourishes, the dialog of the film is generally stagey and stilted. We are clearly watching a movie and not watching reality, but the point is that what we have is good.
And we're led to accept and enjoy this or any "copy" of "reality," whether it’s a Michelangelo or any other Certified Copy.
