THE STORY – In search of inspiration for her new novel, Sylvie spies on her neighbors in the building across the street using a telescope. When she hires young Adam to help her with her daily routine, she has no idea that he will turn her life and her work upside down, until the fiction she had imagined surpasses the reality of them all.
THE CAST – Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney & Adam Bessa
THE TEAM – Asghar Farhadi (Director/Writer) & Massoumeh Lahidji (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 139 minutes
There are many, many stories, both in our real world and in popular entertainment, about the power of fiction and its ability to change lives. Who among us doesn’t have a movie that gave them a new perspective? Or a book that helped them make an important decision? Or a song that made vague, unplaceable emotions feel specific? Beyond mere amusement, fiction has been an impactful source of inspiration for literally every human being, guiding us through hardship and happiness and making us feel like we’re not alone. But what if fiction had the opposite effect? What if the taking in of a made-up story led to disastrous results? Such is the seed of inspiration behind master filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s latest, “Parallel Tales.” A compounding, layered story about the surprising ways that lives can intersect is decidedly unpredictable in its plotting, moving far from what seems like its established concept. And yet, it eventually settles into a repetitive rhythm, repeating the same points and revisiting ideas over and over, stretching out its length to an untenable degree.
The film begins with Sylvie (Isabelle Huppert), who appears to be the film’s main character (more on that later). Reclusive and living in fabulous disarray, the eccentric author has become something of a hermit in her large but overstuffed Paris flat. Almost as a creative exercise, she spends her time observing her neighbors through a telescope. She uses her limited understanding of how they spend their time to construct a narrative that she plans to use as the basis for her next book. From what she sees, she decides that the trio of Foley artists dubbing sound effects into film footage from an apartment (which doesn’t seem like the ideal place to carry out such a delicate craft) must actually be caught in a torrid love triangle. In Sylvie’s story, the woman she names Anna (Virginie Efira), whom she makes over with a brunette hairdo in place of the real figure’s blonde look, is married to the man she calls Christophe (Pierre Niney). But behind his back, Anna is sleeping with the much older Pierre (Vincent Cassel, who is forbidden by law from ever having a normal relationship in a film).
We see Sylvie’s vision of this trio’s messy melding of their personal and professional lives as performed by the same actors who play the non-fiction versions of these figures. These sequences, narrated by Sylvie and visually distinguished with a moody blue filter, play up the cheesy romantic elements and melodrama that one might expect from such a tragique ménage à trois. For instance, in these false realities, the footage that they’re adding sound effects to is an explicit sex scene, requiring Anna to make squeaky noises on an old spring mattress. Hilariously, when we later see the actual video of what they’re working on, it turns out to be banal animal footage, with the sounds of flapping wings and hooves splashing in puddles replicated with household objects. It’s definitely not a major focus of the film, but the scenes of the trio making sound effects are a fascinating treat for cinephiles.
But these fantasy segments end about halfway through the film, thanks to circumstances that bring Sylvie’s writing to an end. Which, for the audience, is a shame, because that also means that Huppert is mostly absent from that point forward. Obviously, one of our finest living actresses draws attention no matter what she’s doing. Still, Farhadi makes the living legend into a kooky old lady, the kind of neighbor that you’d scurry past while avoiding eye contact in an apartment lobby, but exactly the type of character who makes for a compelling screen presence. Outfitted and styled like a more earthbound Aunt Gladys (Tante Geneviève?), she shuffles around her cluttered apartment, stepping on broken glass and avoiding skittering mice. In one scene, she lights a cigarette in a way that no human, cinematic or otherwise, has before, and the image of her looking through her telescope is destined to be memed to death on Film Twitter. It’s a borderline camp performance, and the ever-game Huppert is a treat to watch. Whether the pitch of her performance is an appropriate prelude for the rest of the movie that follows after her semi-departure is a different story, but that’s Farhadi’s responsibility, not Huppert’s.
After Sylvie abandons her book at the behest of her editor (a one-scene appearance by the legendary Catherine Deneuve), it falls into the hands of Nita, the woman on whom Anna was based. This is the doing of a trickster named Adam (Adam Bessa), a strong contender for Oddest Character of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. He enters Sylvie’s life through her niece (India Hair) after he halts a would-be robbery on the metro. He’s looking for a place to live, and the two women unknowingly invite a vampire over their threshold by letting Adam live in Sylvie’s apartment (although this plot development happens so suddenly and subtly that it’s easy to miss, which is odd considering how overly explanatory the screenplay gets later in the film). Little do they know that Adam is a certified freak, seven days a week. He simply loves to creep out unsuspecting women, who are lured in by his unassuming, soft-spoken ways. Bessa leans into the contrast between Adam’s behavior and his actions, but the film isn’t deliberately constructed to allow his bizarre character to serve as a point of mysterious allure. Instead, he just feels like a problem that the film must uncomfortably move past every time he slides into frame. In fact, the film’s overall plotting is numbingly repetitive, hitting the same points over and over again and stretching out its runtime well past what its story needs. By the time a minor cleaning lady character gets a third scene where she talks about her back pain, it feels like it’s time to wrap it up.
“Parallel Tales” is appropriately named, not just because of its dual dramas in neighbors’ apartments, but because the film is divided into two distinct halves. Unfortunately, the second half is interminable and desperately missing the welcome ridiculous presence of Huppert. It’s as if the dramatics simply don’t have a place for her or her character. With his impressive filmography, Farhadi has previously proved himself to be the king of tightly structured human dramas. As such, it’s extra disappointing that “Parallel Tales” unspools away from sense and a compelling drive and instead turns out to be a monotonous, limp misfire.
