Asghar Farhadi Has Made a Very Silly French Melodrama

A film set in two apartments across from each other in Paris follows Sylvie, a prickly author who delays moving out and becomes semi-feral while writing. Her niece hires help as Sylvie watches neighbors through a telescope and uses them as inspiration. In the other apartment, a Foley studio operates with three employees whose identities are initially unclear. Sylvie’s imagination transforms one coworker into a sultry figure with cruelty, involving dating, secret affairs, and a married boss. Her fictional narrative unfolds through stormy nights and misty drives, presented to an editor who dismisses it as conventional and dated. The movie’s tone and drama are portrayed as prestige-leaning but not fully earned.

"Asghar Farhadi's confounding new film, Parallel Tales, takes place in a pair of apartments located across the street from each other in the 10th Arrondissement of Paris. One of them is home to Sylvie (Isabelle Huppert), a prickly author who is supposed to be getting ready to move out but has instead descended into such a semi-feral state while working on her latest novel that her niece, Laurence (India Hair), hires someone to help her out."

"Sylvie, a borderline recluse, has been watching her neighbors through a telescope and using them as inspiration for her writing, work that's rendered in vivid detail onscreen. In Sylvie's imagination, Nita becomes Anna, a sultry beauty with a cruel streak who has been dating the meek Christophe (Niney) while secretly engaging in an affair with their married boss, Pierre (Cassel). Out of her glimpses of these three co-workers, Sylvie spins a torrid fictional tale of sex, betrayal, and murder by audio equipment that unfolds over stormy nights and misty drives outside the city."

"When Sylvie presents it to her editor (an unflappable Catherine Deneuve), the other woman is unimpressed, calling it "conventional and dated." Those are observations you could just as easily make of the movie itself, which isn't Farhadi's first feature in French but is the first to really feel like one, and not in a good way. Parallel Tales plays regrettably like the kind of thing that used to be the bread and butter of American art-house chains between more notable releases, a facile drama that gets treated with more respect than it deserves because its setting and stars give it a sheen of prestige u"

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