Reseeing Iran ’17: 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami

Somehow Abbas Kiarostami found a way to rise above the extreme manifestations of politics and ideology that have bedeviled Iran for decades. He never went into exile (voluntarily or otherwise), yet he openly collaborated with dissident filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rassoulof. He rarely directly addressed contentious issues, yet his focus on children characters is often considered a deliberate strategy to circumvent censorship. With his death, there is no equivalent filmmaker to step into his shoes. Kiarostami’s friend and photographic colleague Seyfolah Samadian splices together some of the fond moments he captured with the master in 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as part of Reseeing Iran: The 21st Annual Iranian Film Festival in DC.

It is easy to see why Samadian and Kiarostami were friends and collaborators. As fellow photographers, they both shared an appreciation for visual composition. Unfortunately, from a cinematic perspective, Samadian was apparently particularly involved in Kiarostami’s long-take video installation Five Dedicated to Ozu, an ostensive tribute to the Japanese master, which is easily one of the most challenging films in the Kiarostami oeuvre. However, it makes it clear those paddlings of ducks and gaggles of geese did not happen by accident.

If nothing else, 76 Minutes will present a clear picture of Kiarostami’s painstakingly deliberate process of crafting film. Yet, there is nothing neurotic or obsessive about it. Instead, he rather seems to enjoy it. As befits its purpose as a tribute film, Samadian includes many scenes of Kiarostami reciting poetry and laughing with friends. Both subject and toastmaster-documentarian also look like they get a kick out of the meta scenes, as when Samadian films Kiarostami “co-directing” a scene Massoud Kimiai, with Panahi serving as their handheld cinematographer.

There are some interesting insights tucked away in 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds (an accurate reflection of the films running time that also references Kiarostami’s age at the time of his death: 76 years and 15 days), but it is definitely a small, quiet film. Still, the man who helmed minimalist fare such as Five and Shirin would probably approve.

Samadian’s doc has often been paired-up with Kiarostami’s final short film on the festival circuit and such is the case again this weekend. Kiarostami’s Take Me Home is a Red Balloon-esque film that follows a rolling soccer-football through the infinite, Escher-like steps of a picturesque Southern Italian coastal village. The black-and-white cinematography is spectacular and Peter Soleimanipour’s melodic score is snappy and sophisticated, but the computer-enhanced bouncing ball is often distractingly fake looking. Still, it is another film that illustrates how Kiarostami’s photographic sensibilities influenced his films. 

Regardless, Certified Copy remains one of his most wry and rapturously best films. 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami is basically recommended for the auteur’s dedicated admirers when it screens tomorrow (2/26) at the National Gallery of Art, but Certified Copy is recommended for everyone when it screens today (2/25) and Monday (2/27) at the AFI Silver Theatre, as part of Reseeing Iran.

Kiarostami at FSLC: Shirin

If a pre-Islamic Persian king and an Armenian princess cannot make love work, than what hope does anyone have?  Considered the rough Persian equivalents of Romeo and Juliet, Khosrow and Shirin ruled their respective kingdoms, but their love was always beset with complications.  It would be fascinating to see Abbas Kiarostami take on the legendary romance, but he tells the tale immortalized in Nizami Ganjavi’s epic poem rather obliquely in Shirin, which screens tonight as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s retrospective series, A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami.

Perhaps someone has adapted Khosrow and Shirin for the big screen, but it was not really Kiarostami.  Instead, he filmed over one hundred Iranian actresses and Juliette Binoche as they watch that hypothetical movie.  At least it has a soundtrack, so viewers can follow the story that has tears flowing almost right from the start.  The two protagonists fall deeply in love with each other before they even meet properly.  Naturally, their star-crossed love never runs smoothly.  Eventually, Khosrow marries Caesar’s daughter to secure Rome’s military support retaking his former throne.  It is a long marriage, complete with kids.  Meanwhile, Shirin abdicates, moving to Iran to live a life of self-denial and waiting.  However, the plan almost veers off into left field when she meets this smitten stone-carver named Farhad.

It sounds like great epic stuff, but that’s as far as we can tell.  Shirin is another example of Kiarostami subverting and de-privileging narrative.  For Kiarostami, what the epic romance means to the famous viewers is more important than the tale itself.  The results are rather more interesting in theory than as a sustained viewing experience.

To be fair, Shirin offers a parade of familiar faces for those well versed in Iranian cinema.  Indeed, it is rather significant who is present and who is not.  For instance, Golshifteh Farahani appears late in the film, but she would soon find herself disowned by her country for appearing in a Western film, Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies.  Of course, Shohreh Aghdashloo, the star of Kiarostami’s pre-Revolutionary The Report was long gone.  Also missing from the proceedings is the then lesser known Marzieh Vafamehr, who would later be sentenced to ninety lashes and a year in prison (an insane judgment even by current standards of the Islamist regime) for appearing in My Tehran for Sale.  However, Leila Hatami of the future Oscar winner A Separation is present and accounted for.

Often feeling rife with meaning, Kiarostami’s films seem to spur deep tealeaf reading.  Arguably, the auteur gives the epic a pronounced feminist spin, emphasizing how much Shirin sacrificed compared to Khosrow’s relative comfort.  It is a reading encouraged by the actresses’ heavy emotional responses to what they were not really seeing.  Yet, there is just as often a lingering doubt as to just how much is wishful interpretation with Kiarostami, who has never taken social criticism as far as his former protégé Jafar Panahi. 

Shirin never comes across gimmicky, thanks to Kiarostami’s sensitive hand on the rudder, but it still overstays its welcome as a feature.  Half an hour or so would have been sufficient to create the desired effect, even if it would have required a shorter tragedy.  Interesting at times, but not essential, Shirin screens tonight (2/16) at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the FSLC’s Kiarostami retrospective, which concludes tomorrow.

Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love

Japan is a part of Asia, an obvious but convenient fact for Abbas Kiarostami.  After the elegant Tuscan setting of Certified Copy, it might have seemed advisable to avoid the evil “West” for his next project filmed outside his native Iran.  Yet, the simple fact remains—to make films that reflect his personal aesthetic vision Kiarostami has had to accept a state of de facto exile.  Like Copy, there are striking images and plenty of narrative gamesmanship afoot in Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Akiko does not appear to be inclined towards emotional involvement, so her escorting gig is probably a reasonable option to cover her college tuition.  Putting off her boyfriend and blowing off her visiting grandmother, she is about to meet a new client.  However, retired professor Takashi is only interested in the sort of chaste intimacy she constantly rejects.  Nonetheless, she lets her guard down with the old man, falling asleep in his flat.  The next morning he drives her to class, where their paths cross that of her boyfriend and complications ensue.

Kiarostami clearly has an affinity for Japanese cinema, having paid strange tribute to Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu with his non-narrative Five Dedicated to Ozu.  While there is definitely a kernel of the great master’s work in the way Prof. Takashi relates to Akiko, Someone is a distinctly colder fish.  In fact, it presents a rather pessimistic view of humanity, compared to Ozu’s forgiving humanism.

For an apparently simple story, Someone guards its secrets vigilantly, which gets frustrating after time.  Nonetheless, Kiarostami still coaxed some excellent performances from his small ensemble, despite the language barrier.  Rin Takanashi (also excellent in the disturbing Isn’t Anyone Alive) takes a star-making turn, so vulnerable yet such a passive aggressive presence as the brittle Akiko.  Conversely, Tadashi Okuno nearly approaches the pathos of Ozu’s aging protagonists as the lonely professor.

Stylishly lensed by Katsumi Yanagijima and featuring a soundtrack of moody jazz classics (the most apt being Ellington’s “In My Solitude” rather than Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the song lending its title to the film), Someone looks and sounds great, almost lulling the audience into a hypnotic trance.  Yet, even with the fine work from Takanashi and Okuno, Kiarostami is just too demur and elliptical in his narrative approach to fully engage viewers.  Accomplished in many ways, but certainly not a masterwork, Like Someone in Love is recommended mainly for the filmmaker’s dedicated admirers and fans of Japanese cinema in need of a fix when it opens today (2/15) in New York, including the Landmark Sunshine downtown and the Walter Reade Theater, in conjunction with the FSLC’s Kiarostami retrospective, which concludes this weekend.

Kiarostami at FSLC: Ten

When your attention is divided, you say things you might not ordinarily—like say when driving in heavy traffic.  That is more or less the premise underlying a deceptively simple film from Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami.  Through ten conversations her various passengers, much is revealed about the state of the driver’s personal relationships and well as Iranian society in Kiarostami’s Ten (clip here), which screens as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s retrospective series, A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami.

Kiarostami seems to have an affinity for interior car scenes.  They factor in his two latest films, Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, but for Ten they are the whole enchilada.  The dashboard cam Kiarostami employs might suggest an Iranian Taxicab Confessions, but the driver is no cabbie (though at one point she gives a lift to a prostitute).  She is a well educated working professional—a fact her bratty son is none too thrilled about.

During the course of several conversations with the entitled young Amin and her sister, we learn the driver divorced her first husband and remarried.  Given the legal status of women, her only recourse was to allege either adultery or drug addiction.  She did the latter and it evidently stuck, but her ex clearly uses it to stoke their son’s resentment.

The driver’s further conversations hint at boorish male behavior enabled by a rigidly patriarchal society.  While she cautions one recently dumped friend against her apparently excessive co-dependency, she has sympathy for one more traditional woman spurned by the man she assumed she would wed.  Arguably, these are the strongest sequences in the film, bringing socially and temperamentally different women together on common ground.  Regardless, it seems safe to assume the driver and most of her passengers would not otherwise wear the headscarves they continually fan and fiddle with on a hot summer day, if they had a real choice in the matter.

Ten implies much with great economy.  While the audience does not know the driver’s full story, everyone should have a very good idea of where she is in life by the end of the film.  Kiarostami is cautious but not unsympathetic in the manner he portrays a less than slavishly devout modern woman in contemporary Iran.  It is not a Panahi film, but it has its moments.

Despite being heard rather than seen for a good portion of each segment, actress-director Mania Akbari is quite good at multi-tasking, staying in character and facilitating each conversation while navigating the chaotic streets of Tehran.  She really makes you feel a mother’s frustration in her scenes with the petulant Amin, but also expresses heart-felt compassion for the jilted woman she twice drives to a local shrine.

The sheer volume of minimalist indie mumblecore released over the last decade somewhat lessens the effect of Ten’s stylistic austerity.  However, Kiarostami’s film actually has something to say, albeit obliquely.  Indeed, watching it develop is still rather fascinating.  Recommended to those with an interest in either Iranian or feminist cinema, Ten screens tomorrow night (2/15) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami.

Kiarostami at FSLC: Five Dedicated to Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu had a deft touch when it came to directing children.  It would therefore make perfect sense the auteur’s work has deep resonance for Iranian filmmakers.  Yet, it was the Japanese master’s so-called “pillow shots,” brief but peaceful still life transition images, that inspired Abbas Kiarostami’s tribute Five Dedicated to Ozu (clip here), which screens as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s latest retrospective, A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami.

Also known as Five Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu (or simply Five), Kiarostami’s homage deliberately eschews narrative and characterization in favor of pure composition.  Having premiered as a museum installation, it is best considered as part of that experimental genre.  Nonetheless, for admirers of Kiarostami and his protégé Jafar Panahi, it carries additional significance as the film the former shot while they were co-writing Panahi’s politically charged Crimson Gold.

Those five long takes show the Caspian Sea, almost entirely from a fixed vantage point.  In the first scene, we watch the tide drag a piece of driftwood back and forth, for a lulling effect.  The following boardwalk scene also features repetitive motion as indistinct pedestrians walk through the camera’s field of vision.  However, viewers might wonder at various times if perhaps Panahi has just made his reported cameo.  While one would think there is nothing conceivably objectionable in Five, the many uncovered female heads in this scene would most likely be problematic in Kiarostami’s native Iran.  Of course, the pace and meditative vibe of Five provides plenty of time for the audience to wonder about such matters.

Considering the third take features dogs—unclean animals according to the ruling mullahs—Five probably has two strikes going against it.  Presenting the frolicking canines as tiny figures on the horizon, it might be Kiarostami’s most interestingly framed shot, closely resembling an ECM album cover.

For kids who love ducks, Five might just be worth having for the fourth take of duckies waddling across the beach.  Without question, they are the most entertaining part of the film.  For the concluding fifth take, it is frogs that are heard but not seen, as the moon rises and glimmers over the dark sea.

When most Ozu fans watch Five, their thoughts will probably wander to what those great films really mean to them.  As pleasant as they might be, his work is not beloved for the pillow shots Kiarostami has so greatly expanded here.  It is the exquisite dignity of Chishu Ryu’s many father figures, Keiko Kishi’s endearing sexuality in Early Spring, and most of all the legendary work of Setsuko Hara.  To see her in the “Noriko” films is to fall head-over-heels madly in love with her.  It is precisely that humanity that is missing from Five.

Regardless, Kiarostami most likely accomplishes what he set out to do with Five, so here it is.  At least it presents an opportunity for viewers to reflect on their respect and affection for the films of Ozu and Panahi, which is something.  Recommended primarily for patrons of the non-narrative avant-garde, Five Dedicated to Ozu screens this Thursday (2/14) at the Walter Reade Theater, as does recent masterwork, the highly recommended Certified Copy starring the incomparable Juliette Binoche, as part of the Close-Up on Abbas Kiarostami career retrospective.

NYFF ’12: Like Someone in Love

Japan is a part of Asia, an obvious but convenient fact for Abbas Kiarostami.  After the elegant Tuscan setting of Certified Copy, it seemed advisable to avoid the evil “West” for his next project filmed outside his native Iran.  It was probably fortuitous, considering the official Iranian film establishment is indulging in a paroxysm of insanity, withdrawing its official foreign language Academy Award submission in protest of a youtube video only a handful of people saw, the very year after the breakout victory of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.  Yet, like Copy, there is still plenty of narrative gamesmanship afoot in Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (trailer here), which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Akiko does not appear to be inclined towards emotional involvement, so her escorting gig is probably a reasonable option to cover her college tuition.  Putting off her boyfriend and blowing off her visiting grandmother, she is about to meet a new client.  However, retired professor Takashi is only interested in the sort of chaste intimacy she constantly rejects.  Nonetheless, she lets her guard down with the old man, falling asleep in his flat.  The next morning he drives her to class, where their paths cross that of her boyfriend and complications ensue.

Kiarostami clearly has an affinity for Japanese cinema, having paid tribute to Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu with his cinematic-essay Five Dedicated to Ozu.  While there is definitely a kernel of the great master’s work in the way Prof. Takashi relates to Akiko, Someone is a distinctly colder fish.  In fact, it presents a rather pessimistic view of humanity, compared to Ozu’s forgiving humanism.

For an apparently simple story, Someone guards its secrets vigilantly, which gets frustrating after time.  Nonetheless, Kiarostami still coaxed some excellent performances from his small ensemble, despite the language barrier.  Rin Takanashi (also excellent in the disturbing Isn’t Anyone Alive) takes a star-making turn, so vulnerable yet such a passive aggressive presence as the brittle Akiko.  Conversely, Tadashi Okuno nearly approaches the pathos of Ozu’s aging protagonists as the lonely professor.

Stylishly lensed by Katsumi Yanagijima and featuring a soundtrack of moody jazz classics (the most apt being Ellington’s “In My Solitude” rather than Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the song lending its title to the film), Someone looks and sounds great, almost lulling the audience into a hypnotic trance.  Yet, even with the fine work from Takanashi and Okuno, Kiarostami is just too demur and elliptical in his narrative approach to fully engage viewers.  Accomplished in many ways, but certainly not a masterwork, Like Someone in Love is recommended mainly for the filmmaker’s dedicated admirers when it screens again this coming Monday (10/8) as a main slate selection of the 2012 NYFF.

Kiarostami’s Certified Copy

It is a major international auteur’s first production outside his native Iran, featuring a British opera singer in his on-screen acting debut. Fittingly, their efforts were in service of a film that explicitly challenges notions of authenticity. While there is indeed a bit of narrative gamesmanship afoot, the sophistication and seductiveness of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (trailer here) is such that it may be easily enjoyed (savored even) at face value (if you will) when it opens this Friday in New York.

The first sight the unhurried Certified slyly offers the audience (both in the theater and within the film) is an empty chair. Eventually, it is filled by British author James Miller, unapologetically late for his own book talk, cheerfully admitting he has no reasonable excuse. No matter. His baritone voice and erudite charm quickly wins back the restive crowd. However, one woman in the front row reluctantly leaves early, literally pulled away by her hungry son. Clearly, she has also fallen under the speaker’s spell, though she vehemently disagrees with Miller’s premise.

An amateur art historian, Miller wrote a treatise extolling the virtue of replicas, de-coupling notions of value and authenticity from each other. As an antiquities dealer, the unnamed woman sees things more conventionally, but even her son perceives her interest in the writer. In fact, she is visibly nervous when the writer agrees to meet her before his evening flight. They spar good-naturedly over aesthetics and soak up the stunning scenery—so far, so good.

Shortly after a woman mistakes them for a married couple though, the dynamic abruptly changes. The woman is now much more forceful, while the formerly suave man is suddenly petty and petulant. Are the characters play-acting or is Kiarostami playing with us? Either way, we are listening to some very smart discussions about grown-up issues, against an evocative La Dolce Vita backdrop. Kiarostami certainly made the most of his romantic Tuscan locales, which genuinely sparkle through cinematographer Luca Bigazzi’s lens, while also hinting at the mysterious.

One of the world’s finest (and most beautiful) screen thespians, Binoche again demonstrates women can be sensitive and vulnerable, without being weak or compliant. As the nameless woman, she essentially takes on a number of roles so convincingly it makes it difficult to truly know what to make of Certified. In his first screen outing, opera singer William Shimell is very nearly as impressive. He projects an elegant but manly presence quite befitting the character, while his rich voice carries the film’s heavy dialogue with élan.

It is worth noting both Kiarostami and Binoche condemned the Iranian government’s arrest of their mutual friend, Jafar Panahi. In fact, the distraught Binoche’s tears made worldwide headlines during the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where she justly won best actress honors for her work in Certified. One wonders if Kiarostami, who has collaborated with Panahi on several films (including Crimson Gold), will have trouble shooting future projects outside the Islamist prison of Iran, after forcefully speaking out against his persecution. At least, he made his Italian foray count.

Ultimately, Certified is such an intelligent and inviting encounter, it overcomes any viewer resistance to its rather slippery internal nature. Indeed, it is a strange pleasure to submerse one’s self into, thanks to the exceptional charm of its leads and the artful craftsmanship of Kiarostami. One of the best selections of last year’s New York Film Festival, Certified opens this Friday (3/11) in New York at the IFC Center.

Panahi (Not) at Asia Society: Crimson Gold

The Iranian government’s record on human rights is certainly lacking, but anything less than a completely equitable distribution of the country’s vast oil revenues must represent the highest form of hypocrisy. Indeed, the Islamic Republic stands so charged in Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, the winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately, social criticism is a dangerous proposition in Iran. It earned Panahi a six year prison sentence and a twenty-year filmmaking ban. Needless to say, Panahi will not be in attendance when Crimson screens this Friday as part of the Asia Society’s retrospective-tribute to the persecuted filmmaker, but its depiction of a contemporary Iran illiberal in nearly every way, speaks volumes.

There is something profoundly unsettling about Hussein. Though he walks through life in a haze, a little like James Franco at the Oscars, there is a great deal of anger and resentment roiling below the surface. We know right from the start, it is not going to work out for him. Through the circular narrative of celebrated Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s screenplay, the audience witnesses the events that drove Hussein to his tragic hold-up attempt.

Hussein and Ali, the brother of his fiancé, work as pizza deliverymen and dabble in a bit of purse-snatching. One otherwise unremarkable purse holds a receipt for an extravagantly expensive necklace. Intrigued, they proceed to the high-end jewelry store out of curiosity, only to be turned away as the low class riffraff they so obviously are. Hussein’s resulting umbrage will be his undoing, eventually leading us back to where the film started, but the getting there will be both oppressively naturalistic and at times surreal.

Hussein is one of the Islamic Republic’s disposable people, a psychologically traumatized Iran-Iraq War veteran living in abject squalor. However, the mobility of his job allows him to observe both the glaring disparity between the have’s and the have-not’s, as well as the morals police at work. Crimson truly captures the absurdity of contemporary Iran when Hussein tries to deliver his pies to a scandalous party featuring verboten dancing between the sexes, only to be waylaid by the cops waiting outside to arrest each sinner as they leave. Yet, one of Crimson’s inconvenient ironies is the rigid fundamentalism of Hussein himself and his desperately poor neighbors.

Reportedly, Hussein Emadeddin was a nonprofessional actor living with paranoid schizophrenia when Panahi cast him as Crimson’s protagonist. Unlike the typical Hollywood-indie portrayal of mental illness, Emadeddin is never showy in the role. All his energy seems to be directed inward rather than outward. Beyond convincing, he is frankly eerie to watch lumbering through the margins of Iranian society—a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode.

In America, it is a compliment to call Crimson a challenging film. In the mullahs’ Iran, it constitutes a prison sentence. A pointed attack on hypocrisy and a somewhat more circumspect critique of Iranian social controls, Crimson is also compelling tragedy, deftly executed by Panahi. Worth seeing as a film in its own right, Crimson is only too timely given the circumstances of its director. Highly recommended, it screens this Friday (3/4) at Asia Society and once again, tickets are free. In addition, the Society will host a panel discussion on Panahi and free expression in Iran (or the lack there of) that will also be simultaneously webcasted at AsiaSociety.org/Live.

NYFF ’10: Certified Copy

It is a major auteur’s first production outside his native Iran, featuring a British opera singer in his on-screen acting debut. Fittingly, their efforts were in service of a film that explicitly challenges notions of authenticity. While there is indeed a bit of narrative gamesmanship afoot, the sophistication and seductiveness of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (trailer here) is such that it may be enjoyed at face value when it screens at the 48th New York Film Festival.

It is worth noting up front both Kiarostami and lead actress Juliette Binoche condemned the Iranian government’s arrest of his fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi at Cannes, where she eventually won best actress honors for her work in Certified. One wonders if Kiarostami will have trouble shooting future projects outside the Islamist prison of Iran. At least in this case, he certainly made the most of his romantic Tuscan locales, which genuinely sparkle through cinematographer Luca Bigazzi’s lens.

As Certified opens the audience (both in the theater and in the film) are staring at an empty chair. Eventually, it is filled by British author James Miller, unapologetically late for his own book talk, though he cheerfully admits he has no reasonable excuse. No matter. His baritone voice and erudite charm quickly wins back the restive crowd. However, one woman in the front row reluctantly leaves early, literally pulled away by her hungry son. Clearly, she has also fallen under the speaker’s spell, though she vehemently disagrees with Miller’s premise.

An amateur art historian, Miller wrote a treatise extolling the value of replicas, de-coupling notions of value and authenticity from each other. As an antiquities dealer, the unnamed woman sees things more conventionally, but even her son perceives her interest in the writer. In fact, she is visibly nervous when the writer agrees to meet her before his evening flight. They spar good-naturedly over aesthetics and soak up the stunning scenery—so far, so good.

Shortly after a woman mistakes them for a married couple though, the dynamic abruptly changes. The woman is now much more forceful, while the formerly suave man is suddenly petty and petulant. Are the characters play-acting or is Kiarostami playing with us? Either way, we have just heard some very smart discussions about grown-up issues, against an evocative La Dolce Vita backdrop.

One of the world’s finest (and most beautiful) screen thespians, Binoche again demonstrates women can be sensitive and vulnerable, without being weak or compliant. As the woman, she essentially takes on a number of roles so convincingly it makes it difficult to truly know what to make of Certified. In his first screen outing, opera singer William Shimell is nearly as impressive. He projects an elegant but manly presence quite befitting the character and his rich voice well serves the film’s heavy dialogue.

Ultimately, Certified is such an intelligent and inviting encounter, it overcomes any viewer resistance to its rather slippery nature. Indeed, it is a strange pleasure to submerse one’s self into, thanks to the charm of its leads and the craftsmanship of Kiarostami and his dp. One of the best selections of this year’s NYFF, Certified screens this Friday (10/1) and Sunday (10/3) at Alice Tully Hall. It is also worth noting, Panahi’s short The Accordion will also screen during the festival, accompanying Pablo Larraín’s Post Mortem next Monday (10/4) and Tuesday (10/5).