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Showing posts with the label William Shimell

Certified Copy

There are all manner of interesting ideas put forth and never fully explored in Abbas Kiarostami's first "Western," which is to say his first film shot in the West, outside of Iran.  There is writer James Miller (William Shimell) presenting his book Copie Conforme, a supposed meditation on the value of art, be it copy or original.  As Miller and an apparent fan, an unnamed antiques dealer played by Juliette Binoche, head off in her car for the Tuscan village of Lucignano, the dialog about art eventually gives way to an increasingly rancorous discussion about relationships.  Here, seemingly, is the writer/director's most slippery of notions about the certified copy.  The man and woman are mistaken for husband and wife by a matron of a Lucignano restaurant.  They decide to play along.  But so impassioned do they become in their roles, so heated becomes their discussion, that one begins to think they might be a couple married for 15 years after all.  P...