Copying a Relationship

Sometimes it takes the voice of experience to set a theater full of college students straight.

Tonight's film for the VCU Cinematheque series was "Certified Copy," a film shown last year at Cannes and which won Juliette Binoche a Best Actress award.

But that wasn't the reason it was worthy of being shown; it's because it was Iranian New Wave director Abbas Kiarostami's first film made outside his native country.

And that's why I needed to be there. Had I not gone tonight, I wouldn't have even known that there was Iranian New Wave.

Set in Tuscany, the film tells the story of an author whose new book is about how even "originals" aren't really original because everything comes from something.

After his book talk, he is taken by a shop owner for a day in the country and that's when the movie starts shape-shifting.

It was impossible to tell if the two were a long-time married couple of fifteen years or complete strangers spending a day together and pretending to be married.

Dialogue throughout in Italian, French and English suggested both possibilities.

"The way that you love someone changes their value." 

And that was the puzzle of the movie. At times it seemed that she was attempting to try new tactics to rekindle the relationship.

"If we were a bit more tolerant of each other's weaknesses, we wouldn't be alone."


Other times, they seemed like two smart people attracted to each other but playing at being a long-time couple after a shop owner presumed that they were married.

"It'd be stupid to ruin our lives for an ideal."


The notion of copying, whether in art or relationships, permeated the film, making for much philosophical discussion between the two.

You know, just like in real-life relationships.

If you copy the way you felt about a person originally, can those feelings be used to keep that relationship going forward?

And if you can, are the copied feelings any less real than the original ones? Any less valid?

During the discussion afterwards, the students in the audience offered myriad interpretations of the film; it was existentialist, Freudian, a mind game, even slow.

After a half dozen or so shared their opinions, a middle-aged non-student shared hers.

"You're young," she said to the students, "So you might not know this, but I thought the film was all about long-term relationships. Fifteen years is a long time and you've got to work at it to keep things going. I think that was the point."

I agreed with her. It really was as simple as that.

But, as one of the movie's characters said early on, "It's difficult to be simple."

You know, just like in real-life relationships.