What is real or original? What is a copy or a fake?

British author James Miller (William Shimell) is in Italy to promote his latest book Certified Copy, which explores original art and replicas. Juliette Binoche's character is a French gallery owner selling art reproductions. She is able to listen to a few minutes of the lecture before her young son, who is hungry, interrupts her. She leaves the lecture but not before passing along her number in the hopes that Miller will give her a call. They spend a day together in a rural Tuscan village Lucignano.

How does one perceive art? Does one’s opinion or emotion towards it change if one were to be told that he’s looking at an original work versus a reproduction? What if the reproduction is at times better than the original, how is the viewer going to judge that? The whole film is based on these discussions and it gives the viewer no answers, but more of a prodding to think and come up with one’s own opinion.

After all, your truth could be very different from my truth, or our perception of what truth is.

A cafe owner mistakes James for Binoche’s husband. They play along and the rest of the film sees them wandering around the cobbled piazzas and stone paths of the rustic village like married people, bickering about the little things that husbands and wives are prone to over time.

The movie is one intellectual conversation about the value of an original versus its copy both in art and in life. It explores a genre of issues from the complexities of human relationships, particularly that of a husband and wife, the demise of a marriage and the misunderstanding or differences in opinions that breed between couples over time. All these intertwined in the topic of art and its meaning, or perceived meanings. Two people can look at one particular work and come up with different interpretations based on feeling or knowledge.

Relationships end even when the conversation is still going on between a couple because each has become so entrenched in their own internal dialogues that they don’t understand each other anymore, even when they are speaking the same language. At what point in any marriage does any of the party fail to “see” the other person?

The metaphor of the various paths relationships go is not lost on the film. Newly weds are all over the place in one scene, that face of hopes and expectations as an elderly couple is shown in another, exiting from the church together. And the main characters are shown in between, struggling and separated after 15 years of marriage. What makes a marriage last? What makes a young couple so bright-eyed and hopeful?

What is fascinating about this film is the debate it sparks among its viewers. Are they strangers pretending to be married or are they a married couple pretending to be strangers? What is real, what is fiction?

I like the film because it seems like the kind of deep conversation one yearns to have with someone, exploring the authenticity of daily situations we are dealt with, without coming across as trying too hard to be an intelligent film. The conversation flows quite naturally, and Binoche is the consummate actor whose performance brings real depth and intensity to the character she portrays. Oh the different emotions a woman can go through in a span of few minutes. Shimmel doesn’t disappoint, considering that he is an opera singer and this is his film debut.

The movie is reminiscent of the film Before Sunset which revolves mainly around two characters exploring a range of topics, feelings and truthfulness in one long conversation. And it successfully held the storyline both entirely on viewer’s fascination of what were really going on and a great dialogue. And perhaps, because it was in Paris.

Melinda Roos

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