When I saw Certified Copy at VIFF 2010, it was the 5th film that I saw that day and it was 9:30pm so I blame fatigue for not understanding the film.

But there are two standouts of the film: Juliette Binoche and Tuscany.

Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami, captures perfectly the landscape of Tuscany and Binoche turns in a great performance that won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes this year.

From Wikipedia, Certified Copy is  set in Tuscany and focuses on a French antiques dealer, played by Juliette Binoche, who spends a day with the writer of a recently-published book on the value of copies in art (British opera singer William Shimell, in his first film role). The couple appear to have met each other for the first time that day, but as the film progresses it is left deliberately unclear as to whether they are a married couple attempting to rekindle their relationship by pretending to be strangers, or strangers playing the part of a couple. The dialogue is in French, English and Italian.

And from that plot description it makes sense what the film is trying to do but I couldn’t take that much thinking so late at night. I appreciate that storytelling device but the vagueness of it made me confused and tired.

However, I loved the interplay between Binoche and Shimell, as the film progresses their relationship becomes deeper and emotional and both hold their own in their dialogue together.

Since it is a Cannes winner it will open in mainstream theatres. Go and see it and hopefully you will appreciate the storytelling.