Parallel Tales
In the latest Cannes-bowing psychological drama from Asghar Farhadi, Isabelle Huppert leads an all-star ensemble cast, playing a creatively blocked author whose voyeurism causes art and life to bleed into one another.
Sylvie, a reclusive and irascible novelist living in squalor in Paris, struggles to get the creative juices flowing. To address this, she decides to train her telescope on the apartment across the street, where she spies two men and a woman fumbling around with sound recording equipment. Fascinated, she conjures up a melodramatic backstory for the threesome and starts typing. But when a stranger enters her orbit, the lines between fantasy, fabrication and fixation begin to blur.
Asghar Farhadi’s follow-up to the Cannes Grand Prix–awarded A Hero (MIFF 2021) and Oscar winners The Salesman (MIFF 2016) and A Separation (MIFF 2011) is a suspenseful meta-thriller loosely based on the episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue (MIFF 1990) that became A Short Film About Love. Co-written by Farhadi and his brother Saeed, the film evokes Hitchcock and Coppola but deploys its own psychologically complex provocation on truth, intention and interpersonal obsession. Elevated by Guillaume Deffontaines’s sumptuous cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting score, the performances from Vincent Cassel (The Shrouds, MIFF 2024), Virginie Efira (A Private Life, MIFF 2025), Pierre Niney (The Count of Monte Cristo) and Adam Bessa (Ghost Trail, MIFF 2024) – along with screen legend Catherine Deneuve in cameo – are superb, while lead Isabelle Huppert shines as an ill-tempered artist desperate to cling on to fading relevance.
“Gripping [and] cleverly reimagined … What Farhadi has brilliantly cooked up ultimately feels wholly original and deliciously crafted on every level.” – Deadline
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