Juliette Binoche When Juliette Binoche won an Oscar for best supporting actress in The English Patient in 1997, she says she was asked if she wanted to live and work in the US, 'No', she replied, 'I just want to work with Abbas Kiarostami'.
Given that the critically-revered Kiarostami was known for not working with actors, and only in Iran, perhaps it’s not surprising that it took Binoche a little while to realise her dream.
"I saw (director Abbas Kiarostami) at the Cannes festival several times on different occasions," she recounts, "and we have a friend in common, Jean-Claude Carriere, and so each time I said to him 'you know, I'd love to work with him,' he said, 'Well, come to Iran'."
"The last time he said that to me, I thought, 'How can I go there with everything that is happening between Iran and France and England that was so frightening, you know, reading our newspapers, all the threats and all. But I thought, 'I want to know by myself, I want to know what's happening in the streets and in houses' and what it felt like, because Abbas was saying, 'No, no, no, no, just come – you'll see it's not what they said in the newspapers', so I finally came.
"I wanted to work with him but at the same time thinking it's not real, because he doesn't work with actors and he only works in Iran, so what do I expect?"
Confounding expectations seems to be central to Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, and the director began by confounding his leading lady’s expectations straight away, as she explains, "One evening he started telling me a story, in great detail and at the end of it he said, 'Do you believe me?' and I said, 'Yes' and he said, 'Well, it's not true' and I laughed of course, because of the situation in the film, you know, the story is 'Where's the reality, where's the fiction?' and then I was living the same thing in a way. And I laughed the next day and the day after as well."
It was an appropriate beginning to the project for Binoche, because the resulting film seems to leave both critics and filmgoers, if not divided, at the very least in two minds.
At first, Juliette Binoche's French art dealer and William Shimell's British writer strolling through picturesque Tuscan streets together, cues the audience to settle down and await the predictable rhythms of a rom com narrative. Nothing could be further from Certified Copy's shifting perspectives.
This is a film that will send you away from the theatre still searching for the single, rational answer that will make sense of what you've just seen. It's expertly acted by Juliette Binoche, who turns in a terrific performance filled with tension and vulnerability, against William Shimmell's foil of understated British reserve.
Certified Copy tracks the intriguing relationship between a man and woman who appear to have just met. William Shimmell’s character, James Miller, is in Tuscany to promote his new book on the subject of art and the value of original works versus copies. Juliette Binoche, who won Best Actress at Cannes this year for her performance, plays 'Elle' ('She') – an unnamed gallery owner attending Miller’s lecture.
Afterwards, the pair embark on a journey through the Tuscan countryside. At one point they are mistaken for a married couple and, on the insistence of Binoche’s character, they keep up the pretence, but as time wears on we it seems there may be more to their apparently new relationship than meets the eye. Kiarostami constantly challenges his viewers to work out what is copy and original, play-acting and reality.
Binoche agrees with the assessment that the two were playing male and female archetypes, "Right, it's like Adam and Eve. Absolutely. That was his (Kiarostami's) idea, that's why he didn't give (my character) a name. Because it was more the archetype, as you were saying, of the woman.
"And what Abbas is saying, in other words, is that women expose themselves more easily emotionally and take a risk of being ridiculous, of being needy and pleading on their knees and provoking the man as much as she can until something comes out of him. That's why he chose him (Miller) as a writer, liking stories but not involving himself emotionally. So that was absolutely his (Abbas’) purpose."
"At the beginning, she (Binoche's character) has this kind of force, of going forward and driving the car and taking him to a specific place and walking him to a specific place – she is driving the situation, the story, until there's a moment where she feels unsettled and then it goes to different layers.
"Like in the cafe, when she's talking about her and her son, and how she relates herself to this, and you don't know whether it's true or not - and that's not the purpose, in a way, to know whether it's true - but there's something you see of different layers, until there's a moment where he doesn't play the role of the man, the husband.
"When the Italian lady takes them as man and wife, she's setting up the situation of wife and husband and asking him, 'So what do you do?'
"Then he turns to her (Binoche's character) and says, 'So, what do I do?' And she gets really hurt by it and it's like she's projecting on him all her needs of having a man being strong and being responsible with a child, because she's a lonely mother. And it's very hard to have this responsibility on your own.”
Binoche had her own experiences as a single mother to draw on upon for this role, of which she says, "My story is different, but it's as complicated, probably. I mean, even if you're in a couple and you have children, sometimes you very, very much feel alone, raising the child on your own, because the other one is away or has a different point of view or doesn't want to take care of that side of the problem with the child or that side of the situation, so you can feel alone even though you're married or even though you're raising a child with someone."