PARALLEL TALES (HISTOIRES PARALLÈLES) Luminaries

North American Premiere

Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi reworks aspects of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING into a metafictional maze, mixing voyeurism, deceit and illusion into a twisty tale of competitive fictions. Faded novelist and jaded recluse Sylvie (Isabelle Huppert) spies on the sound effects team working in the apartment studio across the street — Pierre (Vincent Cassel), his wife Nita (Virginie Efira) and his younger brother Christophe (Pierre Niney) — and pens a melodramatic love triangle based on her wild imaginings. Sylvie abandons the manuscript after her longtime editor Céline (Catherine Deneuve) rejects it, only for her ex-con hired hand Adam (Adam Bessa), to claim it from the rubbish and present it as his own work … to Nita, whom he befriends in a café. Later, Nita shares the manuscript with Pierre and Christophe, who dismiss it. But the tawdry tale still gets under their skin. Sylvie’s voyeurism fired her imagination to create this work of fiction, later abandoned by its author, but claimed by another, who, desperate for re-invention, claims he is its author. The story Sylvie writes is both rejected as worthless, and highly coveted; it’s dismissed as far-fetched, but also powerfully, almost magically, influential. After the real-life models find out about the fictional narrative based on them, they take offense, but nonetheless partially succumb to its narrative. PARALLEL TALES may be Farhadi’s most cerebral, and contrary, work: it’s reverent about creativity, but dubious about authorship, and aware that good ideas may be shunned while bad ideas can go viral. –Todd Hitchcock