Certified Copy, The Thin Line between Original and Original

The window and the mirror have often represented, in the history of cinema theories, two different ways to deal with the nature of vision: the first pledging to be the instrument to point to reality and the world, and the second appearing as a magnet, attracting, absorbing and redoubling individual subjectivities. In two short but meaningful sequences of Copie conforme (Certified Copy) Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami resolves this dicotomy, depriving both objects of their primary function: the window does not show and the mirror does not reflect. Dealing with the theorical and practical consequences of this choice, which is read through the critical lenses of scholars such as Metz, Deleuze, Eco and Merleau-Ponty, the boundary spaces which separate and unite on-screen and off-screen, filmic and non-filmic, diegetic and non-diegetic, screen and theatre, copy and original are explored, especially when the camera takes the place of the mirror.