Abbas Kiarostami is a director who has put Iran on the world cinema map. He belongs to a generation that created the so-called '' new wave’’ in the ‘60s in Iran, which is characterized by poetic language, a different narrative, and which deals with the philosophical and political issues.
Kiarostami is distinguished by its unique style and unpretentious poetic.
He sets the screen as a window, but this is not about voyeurism or narcissism, he simply opens our view to achieving and experiencing reality as truthfulness. We can only detect if we look closely enough. So, he is engaged in a form
''a film about the film'' or ''film in the film'' rather than trying to get us into a reality that has many faces.
Not only that he breaks the conventions of classical narrative and documentary film, he also reviewes the role of the audience. He plays with their expectations and makes you actively engage in the film.
In the film ''The Taste of Cherry’' the reason for Badi’s suicide is not given, the viewer have to contemplate, therefore, the audience has to reinvent itself to the ground. Kiarostami believes that viewers must be submitted to this '' holes '' in the film. ''Taste of Cherry '' overlaps between fiction and documentary, which not only adds another dimension to the film, it’s separating the audience and gives her a proctor in the film. When at the end of the film hero lies in his grave, after a long fade, we see a film crew that captures the scene. The audience begins to feel its presence, he offers us a kind of mirror, and forces the viewer to think about himself.
Kiarostami make films without the classic plot and narrative, in fact it tends absence of any plot in the true sense.
Certified Copy is set up very easily: James Miller (William Shimell), comes in Toscana to lecture on his new book
called ''Certified Copy'', in the audience is a French woman (Juliette Binoche), with extremely impatient son and is soon forced to leave the room, but she negotiates a meeting with the writer later that day. James comes to her antique shop to pick her up and they decide to spend the day touring the city.
At first it looks like they just met, but the film gets a twist in the cafe when the waitress (wrongly?) interpret that the two are married, and they decide to play this game. As the film continues the viewer has the impression that everything they know about the characters begins to be deleted, and by the end we are not sure whether all of this is a game, or they are really married, whether she may be his mistress, etc.
One of the key scenes of the film is the scene at the fountain, when discussing how they experience the statue, she is experiencing it emotional and deeply, as he perceived it cold rational and logical. Kiarostami does not take sides, thereby sending a message that both are valid and original thinking, the question is the perception of the person who is watching.
That is the theme of the film - not only about the relationship between man and woman as ''what is reality and what actually we experience'' , but copies within our lives, valid copies. The theme of reproduction is found in every segment of the film; dialogues are repeated, the information obtained through three different languages, repeated shots; words and images are played in something tangible. What is more interesting is that the characters in the film are watching themselves in the mirror.
Shots of dialogue reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu's aesthetics, but Kiarostami's places actors in the middle of the frame, so it works as if they are looking at the camera, so that the viewer feels as if he were part of the conversation.
Film, therefore can’t be watched passively, it’s built according to the viewer's attention.
Binoche, who for this role won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, plays an amazing game of 'role inside role'', changing extremely different feelings sometimes even within the same frame.
In the scene in the toilet in the restaurant, while looking at herself in the mirror, and putting lipstick and earrings for her husband (?) who do not even notice after she returns to the table, she plays incredibly elegant disappointment and anger, taking earrings very dramatic, but just enough to not be over-exaggerated.
This film many critics associated with Rosselini ‘’Journey to Italy’’ (1954), daring to call it even a remake. The assumption is that Kiarostami has tried to make a copy of European art film to achieve the concept of ''certified copies'' at all levels of work.
Kiarostami said in one interview
''I can not stand a narrative film. The more the story is adept, my resistance is getting higher. The assumption of the new film is to examine the role of viewer. Film must be conceived as something unfinished and incomplete, so the every spectators is able to step in and fill the void itself, replaced what was missing. Instead of building a solid, flawless structure of the film, it should be free- of course, with the full awareness of the viewer. The solution is to encourage the viewer to an active and constructive presence. More believe in art which seeks to create differences between people, but in one that weighs broad consensus, unanimity. Because, thanks to that first, the diversity of opinion and reactions of people survive .''