Lidia: I feel like dying because I no longer love you. That’s why I’m desperate. I wish I were old, my life’s dedication to you over. I wish I no longer existed, because I can’t love you. That’s the thought that came to me in the night club, when you were so bored.

Giovanni: But if this is true, if you feel like dying, it means you still love me.

Lidia: No. It’s only pity.

Giovanni: I never gave you anything. I was completely unaware. I go on wasting my life, like a fool, taking without giving, or giving too little. If you mean I haven’t much to give, you may be right. . . . I’ve been selfish. Now I realize that what we give others comes back to us. . . . Lidia, let’s finish this. Let’s try to hang on to something we’re sure of. I love you. I’m sure I’m still in love with you. What more can I say? Let’s go home.

Lidia takes out a letter from her purse and reads it to Giovanni: “When I awoke this morning you were still asleep. As I awoke I heard your gentle breathing. I saw your closed eyes, beneath wisps of stray hair, and I was deeply moved. I wanted to cry out, to wake you, but you slept so deeply, so soundly. In the half-light your skin glowed with life, so warm and sweet I wanted to kiss it, but I was afraid to wake you. I was afraid of you awake in my arms again. Instead I wanted something no one could take from me, mine alone, this eternal image of you. Beyond your face I saw a pure beautiful vision, showing us in the perspective of my whole life, all the years to come, even all the years past. That was the most miraculous thing: to feel, for the first time, that you had always been mine, that this night would go on forever, united with your warmth, your thought, your will. At that moment I realized how much I loved you, Lidia. I wept with the intensity of the emotion. For I felt that this must never end. We would remain like this all our lives, not only close but belonging to each other in a way that nothing could ever destroy—except the apathy of habit, the only threat. Then you wakened and, smiling, put your arms around me, kissed me, and I felt there was nothing to fear. We would always be as were at that moment, bound by stronger ties than time and habit.”

Giovanni: Who wrote that?

Lidia: You did.

Giovanni kisses her intensely many times and pulls her down onto the ground.

Lidia: No . . . no . . . I don’t love you any more. I don’t love you any more! You don’t love me, either. . . . Say it. Say it.

Giovanni: No. I won’t say it. I won’t say it.

The camera moves back and pans slowly to the left and we no longer see them. Music from the jazz quartet plays. The end.

Lots of similarities.

And yet La Notte is a great film and Certified Copy is a failure. True gold . . . false gold.

Even though each film moves at a languorous pace, La Notte is always fascinating while Certified Copy is tedious.

While La Notte takes us into a world filled with heart, Certified Copy gives us heartlessness. Elle—in contrast to Lidia—spends lots of time in petty complaint. James—in contrast to Giovanni—is aloof and condescending and sarcastic, at one point in a restaurant coldly barking out commands to the waiter. Giovanni and Lidia are sympathetic and engaging. James and Elle are off-putting and boring.

The thesis of James’s book—Forget the Original Just Get a Good Copy—is that copies are actually to be preferred to originals.        And a certified copy is one that is known to be a copy but is nonetheless officially recognized and given praise because it is a great work in itself. One wonders if James is standing in for Kiarostami, who perhaps down deep knows he does not have the magic of Antonioni but somehow wants to convince himself and us too that his work—the copy—is actually better than that of Antonioni!

Kiarostami is trying to say something important about marriage but he has nothing to say except the obvious: Isn’t it too bad that these two people can’t get along. There are a number of ways this lack is camouflaged. Initially we think James and Elle do not know each other but gradually we realize that they know each other all too well and that their relationship began fifteen years earlier. Tricky. Also she has a 13-year-old son Julian (Adrian Moore) who mocks his mother and is generally an obnoxious brat. This is a fake distraction. Elle drives James out into the gorgeous Tuscan countryside—perhaps being immersed in this will prevent our realizing the emptiness of this film. But no. It doesn’t.

This is not a fluke for Kiarostami. Taste of Cherry (1997) tells the story of a man planning his suicide. Kiarostami manages to make this boring and pretentious and even ridiculous. In The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), an engineer from the city travels to a rural village because of a dying relative. He keeps getting in his jeep and driving to the top of a hill where cell reception is good enough to make phone calls. We never know to whom he is talking. Is it a metaphor for the difficulty of communicating meaningfully with anyone? Do we care?

This gets to the heart of the matter. Giovanni is a flawed character but we care about him. And we care about Lidia too. In fact we care about everyone in La Notte. Their close friend Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki), whom we see in the first scene as he lies in pain dying of cancer in a hospital. Valentina (Monica Vitti), the bored lost beautiful daughter of wealthy industrialist Gherardini (Vincenzo Corbella). Everyone!

There are many truly great films dealing with troubled marriages. For example: The Romantic Englishwoman (Joseph Losey), The Arrangement (Elia Kazan), Paris by Night (David Hare), Gabrielle (Patrice Chéreau), 10:30 P.M. Summer (Jules Dassin), Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard), Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick), Betrayal (David Jones).

La Notte is worthy of that list.

Certified Copy is just a copy . . . and not even a certified copy at that.

La Notte:                    A+
Certified Copy:          F+

©   Richard Hobby