One of the key scenes in Asghar Farhadi‘s ‘Parallel Tales‘ brings together two legends of French cinema on screen: Catherine Deneuve (in her only scene in the film) and Isabelle Huppert. Deneuve plays an editor, while Huppert portrays a novelist whose wellspring of inspiration has run rather dry—at least, in the editor’s view. When the writer questions the cold reception of her manuscript, the editor replies, “That’s not how people write these days.” I wonder if the films of Asghar Farhadi—the Iranian director who continues to live in Iran but has chosen to make his movies in other countries—have faced negative criticism for similar reasons. Could it be that some critics and audience members believe that “they don’t make films like this anymore”—that is, complex psychological dramas featuring characters who evolve before our eyes at a pace quite different from that of Hollywood thrillers? I personally enjoyed this film; it presents a cast of believable characters, references and engages in a dialogue with two famous movies, and explores the connection between reality and fiction—as well as between writers and their characters—in a subtle, gradual way. Furthermore, it offers viewers the chance to reconnect with a formidable ensemble of top-tier French actors.
Sylvie is a writer who is somewhat advanced in age, rather solitary, and currently grappling with a creative crisis. To stimulate her imagination, she uses a telescope to observe what unfolds in the apartments of a building across the Parisian boulevard where she lives as a tenant. In one of these apartments, two men and a woman have set up a studio for film sound effects. These glimpses into other people’s lives, seen through the telescope and the apartment windows, lead her to imagine a story about a love triangle that ends in murder. Meanwhile, Sylvie meets Adam—a young man her niece picked up at a metro station. Though he has a history of delinquency, he possesses an ingenuous quality and an apparent good-naturedness that win her over, prompting her to hire him as an assistant. However, Adam’s involvement in the lives of the two groups—situated on opposite sides of the boulevard—takes an unpredictable turn. Reality differs from imagination, yet what the writer once imagined begins to shape that reality. Life does not mirror the novel Sylvie is writing; instead, it shifts toward new forms of crisis and violence.
The film is explicitly and visibly influenced by the works of Hitchcock and Kieślowski, as well as the novels of Georges Simenon. In the first part, reality and imagination unfold along parallel, alternating planes. In the second part, the imagined narrative intersects with the real one. As the characters begin to cross paths, their destinies are irrevocably altered. On one side of the street, the two men and the woman—seen through the studio windows—appear more ordinary, and their relationships more mundane, than those imagined by the writer; yet, this encounter with the realm of imagination stirs up latent tensions between them. On the other side, Sylvie discovers that Adam is a manipulator, though perhaps also a gifted storyteller—for what is a writer, if not someone who manipulates their readers through stories? The interplay between appearance and reality, the mundane and the dramatic, and the writer, her characters, and her readers is depicted with great subtlety. Isabelle Huppert delivers yet another compelling performance as a mature woman struggling to navigate life in the wake of major personal upheavals. Vincent Cassel and Pierre Niney—both formidable actors—portray the two men into whose lives suspicion gradually creeps, making tension inevitable. Virginie Efira brings remarkable nuance to the role of a woman who, in the writer’s imagined narrative, serves as the catalyst for rivalry and conflict; her mundane, real-life counterpart eventually finds herself in a similar position, ultimately leaving her wounded. As for Adam, he is played by Adam Bessa—an actor I’ve encountered for the first time, and a talent well worth watching. Asghar Farhadi has faced some criticism, perhaps because his film explores how art mirrors reality—and how reality, in turn, mirrors art—while also serving as a potential commentary on the plagiarism accusation he once faced (and from which he was cleared). That may well be the case, but I, for one, enjoyed ‘Parallel Tales‘. I recommend that you don’t miss the opportunity to watch it.