Ahead of last year’s Venice Film Festival, I got terribly excited about the projected collaboration between Juliette Binoche and Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami — well, what arthouse devotee wouldn’t?
As it turned out, this was either a wrongfooting or a simple miscommunication, for the film that was being talked up — a romantic drama set to be Kiarostami’s first film shot outside his home country — wasn’t the one that appeared at Venice.
Instead, audiences were presented with “Shirin,” an experimental, non-narrative piece in which over a hundred actresses (one of whom was indeed Binoche) were depicted as audience members watching a theatre piece never shown on screen. More gallery installation than cinema, it was a work of befuddling beauty, but little more.
Happily, however, Screen International reports that the initially discussed Binoche/Kiarostami vehicle is now going ahead. “Certified Copy,” a mainly French-language effort, will begin shooting in Tuscany in early June. As far as I can gather, it’s a love story centred on the affair between a French gallery owner and a British writer that blossoms on the latter’s Italian book tour, though details may have changed since last year.
In any case, when you’ve got one of the world’s greatest living actresses working with one of its greatest living filmmakers, and in the Tuscan countryside to boot, it’s churlish to ask too many questions, no? I’m looking forward to whatever they come up with.
Comments
6 responses to “Binoche and Kiarostami team up again”
I wonder who will play the writer? Ralph Fiennes anyone? This sounds divine!
Binoche and Kiarostami are just HEAVEN together.
I can watch anything with Binoche in it (love this woman)
I can watch anything made by Kiarostami.
Wasn’t Francois Cluzet (Tell No One) attached to this project too?
He was indeed, Rose. Not sure if he still is. Details seem a bit sketchy. IMDB lists opera singer William Shimell as the only other cast member, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
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