certifi ed copy DDPP CC.C.C UUK.inddK.indd 1 225/04/105/04/10 221:43:081:43:08 MK2 presents certifi ed copy an Abbas KIAROSTAMI film starring Juliette BINOCHE and William SHIMELL 106 minutes - 35 mm - Colour - 1.85:1 - Dolby SRD - France/Italy - 2010 INTERNATIONAL SALES: MK2 IN CANNES: INTERNATIONAL PUBLICITY: MK2 84 rue d’Antibes Vanessa JERROM and Claire VORGER 55, rue Traversière 06400 Cannes 6/8 Avenue du Général Ferié 75012 Paris Ph: + 33 4 93 06 31 60 06000 - Cannes Ph: +33 1 44 67 30 30 Ph: +33 4 93 94 32 40 fax: 01 43 07 29 63 Mobile ph: +33 6 14 83 88 82 [email protected] [email protected] DISTRIBUTION FRANCE: PUBLICITY FRANCE: MK2 DIFFUSION Monica DONATI 55, rue Traversière - 75012 Paris 55, rue Traversière - 75012 Paris Ph: +33 1 44 67 30 80 Ph: +33 1 43 07 55 22 Fax: 01 43 44 20 18 Mobile ph: +33 6 23 85 06 18 [email protected] DDPP CC.C.C UUK.inddK.indd 22-3-3 225/04/105/04/10 221:43:111:43:11 This is the story of a meeting between one man and one woman, in a small Italian village in Southern Tuscany. The man is a British author who has just finished giving a lecture at a conference. The woman, from France, owns an art gallery. This is a common story that could happen to anyone, anywhere. DDPP CC.C.C UUK.inddK.indd 44-5-5 225/04/105/04/10 221:43:141:43:14 How can one tell yet another story about love in Tuscany. His book hasn’t enjoyed even the The focus of the camera seems to be the mayfly, in Tuscany? Certified Copy: by playing around faintest echo of acclaim in his own country. between her breasts. The weather is warm; the with the clichés. With the usual settings, the Recognition and echo: the film is off and shadow there gleams softly. The woman takes her small love-nest hotels, the cups of coffee cooling running, the copy is rolling. Reflections, shoes off first. There is no end to her modesty as the lovers drink each other in, the narrow rearview mirrors, windows and glasses, everything and sensuality. streets where they go astray, hurt themselves, shimmers. And that assessment the woman will Binoche is an actress who has always had a body, find themselves, their heels clattering on the keep seeking, so that others will tell her who she blunt fingertips, full breasts. Here she embodies cobblestones: “If I’d known we’d be coming is, whom she loves. a whole woman, who sweats, wears earrings that here, I would have worn other shoes,” says the The author is English, played by William leave marks, lipstick that smears. “I made myself woman played by Juliette Binoche. Shimell, a well-known opera singer, a baritone. beautiful for you, and you’re not looking at me?” Other paths following in the same footsteps: in The film is also about voices. Full shot of the He doesn’t remember their wedding anniversary. a little street, the film takes a new turn. Words audience at a lecture, showing their faces, their Time-honored complaints, in every language. take on a disconcerting twist, a detour into the reactions. The sonorous voice drones on; sitting Except that we hear the words as if for the first unfamiliar, the uncanny. This man and this between her son and the translator, the woman time, thanks to the actors, their voices, their woman who have—it seems—only just met are fidgets. Then grows annoyed. It’s annoying, to bodies, carried along by the way in which the story playing at being a couple. be seduced. is “out of synch”. Words spoken to seduce? They pretend so well, in fact, that they seem to The opposite is true, but not completely To find each other, or to leave each other? become one, or to have already been one for symmetrical: the eternal misunderstanding She takes off her bra underneath her dress, in fifteen years. They have already come here. They between men and women. Around the older that maneuver so soon mastered by women who have already played this scene. As have all couples couple swirl young brides and grooms, suits and wear one. She wants to show him the mark where who come to make love in Tuscany, to invent white dresses. The copies they make, the model it was bothering her, hurting her. Is she the wife their own love story, to play in their own film. ancestral couples, the rehearsals and repetitions of fifteen years, languidly at home in the physical “I have a train to catch at nine o’clock.” The man from parents to children: three generations keep routine of flesh and fluids? is, according to the woman, “always absent.” The intersecting, discreetly, in the film. Is she the bold seductress of barely a moment’s first thing the camera films is an empty chair: all A dragonfly pendant dances between the acquaintance, who wants a man and has the we see is a book, Certified Copy. We await the woman’s breasts: a mayfly. A lifetime of love in courage to show that she does? And he, does he author. The credits scroll over a long shot of this a single day: the film disrupts the great classic want her? Does he know her? As of an hour ago, absence and its only legacy, the work. pattern, but without looping through deep shifts a whole lifetime ago, what does he know about A self-portrait of Kiarostami? “He can’t claim in time—we’re not in Marienbad, here. Without her? And about art, and love, and his desire, he’s stuck in traffic, he’s staying in an apartment any psychological nostalgia, either. The love and what he must make of his life, this evening at upstairs,” explains the translator, the first double affair of a single day that opens onto life: this is a nine, and every evening? of the author. Who finally arrives. And who is film neither of phantoms nor regrets, and where pleased by the recognition accorded him here, all illusions are not lost. Marie DARRIEUSSECQ DDPP CC.C.C UUK.inddK.indd 66-7-7 225/04/105/04/10 221:43:141:43:14 One woman may hide another. To an At the end, after talking for 45 minutes in actress, the director’s role is to reveal this perfect English, he said, “Do you believe hidden woman. His ear, his camera, and me?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “It’s not his expectations push her to look deep true!” I burst out laughing so hard, and I within and face herself. She did not know think that may have been what made him before who she was. She finds out at the want to do the film! Reality and fiction have same time as he does. But there is an even always made me laugh because I truly believe stronger force at work, a call travelling that anything is possible. To this day, I’m with the winds, like the slightest kiss: The sure he lived this story. Just as I’m sure that Unknown. When each step, each thought, he didn’t. each sensation joins the physical matter Tuscany is one of those places where completely as if in wedlock, the actress miracles can happen. It’s no surprise that awaits her fiancé, she awaits him like a there are so many saints, oils and greens wound waiting to be soothingly scalded. there. We lived through this film as a family She waits for him at the edge, at an inner made up of old friends, just like the dream crossroads, ready, from within her black of films. We were a small team, in a village, hole, to give the unspeakable, the inaudible, the coolness inside, the heat outside. the untouchable, a flaw, a broken heel, a Time had no place there. Everyone’s eyes crooked stripe, from the darkness at the sparkling with passion, and we were all heart of her soul. happy to be together. Abbas was about to Once upon a time, I went to Iran to meet make his first feature film away from the Abbas (I had seen him in Cannes, at cocoon of his homeland, and his native UNESCO, at Jean-Claude Carrière’s). tongue. And the actor, William, left the He told me, “Come to Teheran!” I took Opera to join Abbas’ world. I watched him, him up on his offer and went. Twice. One nervously, courageously cross the actor’s night he told me the story we shot together space, slowly letting go of what he believed, this summer. He told me every detail: the of what he had learned, in other words, bra, the restaurant, the hotel. In short, he letting go of the script he had learned told me that the story had happened to him. by heart! Juliette BINOCHE DDPP CC.C.C UUK.inddK.indd 88-9-9 225/04/105/04/10 221:43:161:43:16 When rehearsals started in enormously and knew that he was Aix-en-Provence in the summer accustomed to working with non- of 2008, I liked Abbas and his professionals. However, I was assistant and translator Massoumeh somewhat taken aback to find that Lahidji, straight away. I was to work with Juliette Binoche I don’t speak Farsi and Abbas’ English and I realised that Abbas was taking is a work in progress, but we didn’t a huge risk in casting me in the role seem to have too much trouble of ‘James’ especially since several understanding each other and I was established film actors had shown intrigued by his ideas for Cosi fan an interest in working on the film.