7.5/10
The central conceit of Abbas Kiarostami's latest film is a clever one - a man and a woman meet for the first time, go strolling around Italy for the day, and are mistaken for a married couple. Slowly they begin to act like one, with such conviction that it prompts a lot of interesting questions - are the two using their newfound 'roles' to exorcise demons of past relationships? Or to say what they could never say to their current partners, if they exist? Or is this simply Kiarostami putting a budding relationship in a compressor - sort of a pessimistic Before Sunrise, crushing 20 years of togetherness into one afternoon? It's impossible to say. The script is endlessly intriguing but as a film, it's not a rousing success, which is down to the two leads. Juliette Binoche is a fantastic actress while William Shimell is a first-timer and at times it shows, rather painfully. I have no idea why Kiarostami chose to put such wildly disparate performers opposite each other. Also, their characters are not particularly empathetic - Binoche's is endearing, but borders on nutty at times. This is amplified by Shimell's character - he never fully commits to their 'pretend' marriage, wearing a perpetual look of bemusement that subtlely implies that he too, at the end of it all, might just think this woman is crazy. The movie basically makes you spend a day with two characters you don't particularly enjoy spending a day with. Frustrating because it could have been a really great movie, were it not for these missteps.
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