'Copie conforme' by Abbas Kiarostami is a film we both appreciated, starring Juliette Binoche (in the role as 'Elle', a woman without name) and the opera singer (baritone) William Shimell (as James Miller).
James Miller is an author visiting Italy in connection with the release of his latest book, a book that deals with questions about originality and imitations or copies, both in art and maybe also in real life.
Elle enters the room with her son and they take a seat, the son standing in a corner, bored wanting to leave, playing with his small computer game machine.
After a while Elle leaves - as her son is getting more and more impatient - but before she go, she hands over a sheet of paper with her telephone number to James' agent.
Afterwards at a café her son confronts her, saying that he saw how she looked at the author and that the only reason for her leaving her telephone number was because she fell in love with him and therefore wanted to meet him.
She denies this but her son says: "I saw how you looked at him, you didn't listen to a word he said".
Later on Elle meets with James and they start to talk about originality, first from the standpoint of art (in all its diversity) but later on adapted to people and their orinilaity or conformity.
After a while we understand that Elle and James has been married for 15 years and that her son also is his son.
They start to accuse each other and on the same time she tries to reach out a hand to James, in order to restore their relationship.
He seems uninterested in starting all over again, seeing their relationship as something of the past, finished and over with.
While walking from one place to another, meeting people on the way, people serving as 'relational guides', their life stories reveals itself.
The transition from strangers to being a former couple could have been a jump in time but this is not interesting, the interesting thing is their conversation, their encounters with others.
Within this framework their conversation about superficiality and profundity, copies and originals develops and this is performed in a way that makes you think of a greek tragedy, somewhat reminding me - even if I don't know why - of the ambience in movies by Theodoros Angelopoulos.
William Shimmel - in his first role for the movies - was really impressing and he almost outdid Juliette Binoche, who otherwise is one of my (our) favourite actressess.
When Aurore saw Shimmel she growled pleased and when I saw Binoche I did the same!
James Miller is an author visiting Italy in connection with the release of his latest book, a book that deals with questions about originality and imitations or copies, both in art and maybe also in real life.
Elle enters the room with her son and they take a seat, the son standing in a corner, bored wanting to leave, playing with his small computer game machine.
After a while Elle leaves - as her son is getting more and more impatient - but before she go, she hands over a sheet of paper with her telephone number to James' agent.
Afterwards at a café her son confronts her, saying that he saw how she looked at the author and that the only reason for her leaving her telephone number was because she fell in love with him and therefore wanted to meet him.
She denies this but her son says: "I saw how you looked at him, you didn't listen to a word he said".
Later on Elle meets with James and they start to talk about originality, first from the standpoint of art (in all its diversity) but later on adapted to people and their orinilaity or conformity.
After a while we understand that Elle and James has been married for 15 years and that her son also is his son.
They start to accuse each other and on the same time she tries to reach out a hand to James, in order to restore their relationship.
He seems uninterested in starting all over again, seeing their relationship as something of the past, finished and over with.
While walking from one place to another, meeting people on the way, people serving as 'relational guides', their life stories reveals itself.
The transition from strangers to being a former couple could have been a jump in time but this is not interesting, the interesting thing is their conversation, their encounters with others.
Within this framework their conversation about superficiality and profundity, copies and originals develops and this is performed in a way that makes you think of a greek tragedy, somewhat reminding me - even if I don't know why - of the ambience in movies by Theodoros Angelopoulos.
William Shimmel - in his first role for the movies - was really impressing and he almost outdid Juliette Binoche, who otherwise is one of my (our) favourite actressess.
When Aurore saw Shimmel she growled pleased and when I saw Binoche I did the same!
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