Asghar Farhadi’s ‘Parallel Tales’ marks the Iranian director’s second feature shot in France, but it is a far cry from the domestic psychodramas that made his name. Starring Isabelle Huppert as Sylvie, a French novelist past her prime, the film attempts a meditation on fiction and reality through a voyeuristic lens. However, the result is a meandering and amorphous mess that fails to draw the audience into its drama of trickery and deceit.
Sylvie lives in a stately but fraying Paris apartment, where she writes on an ancient Olivetti electric typewriter. Her character feels less like a real-world novelist and more like a stylised cornball-movie version of a Venerable French Author, with Huppert putting on overdone grouchy airs. This lack of authenticity extends to much of the film, which is loosely based on the sixth episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Dekalog’. Where that episode had suspense, ‘Parallel Tales’ has longueurs.
The plot revolves around Sylvie spying through a telescope on a fifth-floor apartment across the street, which turns out to be a sound-effects recording studio. The three sound designers there are involved in a love triangle: Anna (Virginie Efira), who is in a relationship with the older head of production (Vincent Cassel), is secretly seeing a younger co-worker (Pierre Niney). It later emerges that this triangle is Sylvie’s fictionalised version of what she saw. Meanwhile, Sylvie’s niece Céline (India Hair) hires a young drifter, Adam (Adam Bessa), to clean the apartment. Adam takes Sylvie’s abandoned manuscript—the fictional scenario we have been watching—and passes it off as his own to a woman named Nita (also played by Virginie Efira, now blonde). The film then shifts to showing the ‘real’ version of events, which is less racy but still involves a lurch toward adultery.
Despite strong performances from Vincent Cassel and Virginie Efira in her double role, the characters lack life outside these fiction-versus-reality gambits. The film’s baffling structure and lack of emotional engagement make it a disappointing outing for a director known for his flowing ingenuity. ‘Parallel Tales’ ultimately feels like an inflated head game that never quite lands.
