First i have to claim that i am aware of some works of Kiarostami and that i also like some of his works (especially "Taste of Cherry", but also "Close Up" was very interesting), so its not a problem that i expected a mainstream movie and got something else, even though someone could have believed in getting a Hollywood love comedy after seeing this mainstream DVD cover. But yes, though Kiarostami really took some steps in this "easier to digest"-direction it is still a non- mainstream piece of author cinema, but... not a good one! "Certified Copy" feels like the next, fourth part of Richard Linklaters "Before..."-film series. Two people are walking and driving around and are "just talking". The problem with Kiarostamis work is that these persons are not very interesting and that the dialogues are far away of being that clever as those in Linklaters last work of his series in "Before Midnight" were. The whole story and the dialogues are based on the old controversy about original and copy in art history, cause the male protagonist is an book author, who has written about that. the problem is, that Kiarostami and (subsequently also) his characters don't have any idea what "fine arts" is. The book, his character has written, must be the most unnecessary book in art history, cause everything he is talking about are the most easy basics in philosophy and in art history, which western university students learn in their first semester, if not already during the high school years (in Europe). Every philosophy student will read or hear Plato's ideas about art very early and so are Duchamps ideas even more than common places since nearly 100 years (Duchamps fountain, dated 1917). Kiarostamis characters are not only unable to specify the correct sources, they are also not able to add a slightest minimum to these very old ideas. Though Linklaters earlier works "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly" were somewhat incorrect and also influenced by bad esoteric and new age, he had his own way to interpret things and add his own ideas, which were not all good, but at least somewhat interesting. Kiarostamis characters pretend to be professionals but are dumb freshmen with no clue at all and so the whole movie - which is based on these ideas - slides around, is pretending to be clever, but tells just another unfortunate love story of two adult people at the end. The intellectual background doesn't work at all and even the plot twist, relating to the question about the mysterious relationship, crepitates quite early without any good idea. At least the characters could have been likable, but even a great Juliette Binoche wasn't able to get more out of her annoying character, which she had to play. Richard Linklater will show how a wise RomCom with adults will work in his next part of the "Before"-series, Kiarostamis attempt was a big failure and just mediocre, if not even worse. 4-5 points out of 10.
Review of Certified Copy
