Metacritic reviews

Though it's dominated by two people walking and talking, after a point it's as difficult to parse what's real and what's constructed in Certified Copy as it is in the home stretch of "Inception" (although "Before Sunset" and Roberto Rossellini's "Journey To Italy" provide closer models).

A comedy of remarriage buried in intellectual abstraction and cinephilic obsessions, Certified Copy wanders a bit but never loses focus, with the only certainty being that its gimmick is genuine.

The end will haunt you.

Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy is exactly that: The Iranian modernist's first feature to be shot in the West is a flawless riff on our indigenous art cinema.

Binoche has a chance to display her noteworthy gifts as a comedienne, switching effortlessly from English to French and Italian to build a character that is resentful, manipulative and seductive all at once.

Her (Binoche) award-winning performance is reason alone to dive into such intellectual gamesmanship. (She can suggest an entire emotional arc with one facial tic.)

More compelling as an intellectual exercise than an emotional one, Certified Copy finds deep-thinking writer-director Abbas Kiarostami asserting there's nothing new under the Tuscan sun, particularly not his own conventional romantic drama set in rural Italy.

A sort of middle-aged "Before Sunrise" unfolds, meandering and talky. But from the get-go these characters' colloquy is a mutual provocation, not a romantic seduction.

The romantic fable of love, marriage, art and second chances may not add up to all that much but the journey is exquisite.

There's an enchanting, and very Western, musicality in Certified Copy, a mash-up that charms; Mad Decent - master masher, dj and producer Diplo's label - aptly describes it. (Diplo and Buñuel would've loved each other).