Cannes Review: Asghar Farhadi Stumbles With Parallel Tales, A Rare Misfire

Well, sometimes even the best in the business turn in a head-scratcher, and Asghar Farhadi just offered up a prime example with his new film Parallel Tales, which stumbled its way through Cannes. You'd expect big things—you've got Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Cassel, and a premise that seems tailor-made for psychological intrigue. But Farhadi, best known for powerful Iranian dramas, decided to play in a French sandbox this time, and the results are...not great.

The Setup: Authors Behaving Badly

Here’s the gist: Huppert plays Sylvie, a reclusive and pretty cranky novelist who’s hit a wall and starts spinning lurid stories using her neighbors as unwitting muses. She brings on a young homeless guy, Adam (played by Adam Bessa), to help out—on paper, a fresh start for him, but in practice, just a gateway into a whole mess of misperceptions and questionable choices.

The neighbors at the heart of Sylvie’s fever-dream drama are a trio of foley artists—which, if you don’t know, means they add sound effects to movies, which is nerdy and kind of cool. The group: Nita (Virginie Efira), Theo (Pierre Niney), and Nicolas (Vincent Cassel). In Sylvie’s mind (a place you probably don’t want to spend much time), she imagines Nita as a femme fatale cheating with Nicolas behind Theo’s back.

The Real Story vs. The Author’s Bizarre Fantasy

Of course, the actual relationships next door are way less exciting than in Sylvie's manuscript. Turns out, Nicolas and Nita are together (Nicolas isn’t even married), Theo is Nicolas’s brother, and he’s the one with a spouse. But that doesn’t stop Sylvie from embroidering the drama with affairs and betrayals straight out of a throwback melodrama.

Then you have Adam, who gets hired as Sylvie’s assistant. He’s supposedly naive, but honestly, he acts more like a stalker than an innocent. He becomes obsessed with the fictional version of Nita, spying on her and blurring reality in increasingly uncomfortable ways.

High-Caliber Cast, Underused Talent

• Isabelle Huppert (Sylvie): An unpleasant, shut-in writer whose creative fire seems to have dimmed. Huppert can do prickly with her eyes closed, but here she just gets lost in the background.
• Adam Bessa (Adam): The assistant-turned-peeping-Tom. Serves up naiveté, but it ends up feeling more creepy than sympathetic.
• Virginie Efira (Nita): The only one really making an impression, as she juggles her fictionalized vamp persona and her more ordinary real self.
• Vincent Cassel (Nicolas): Plays both the icy lothario—when seen through Sylvie’s imagination—and, in reality, just a weary older guy fighting a bad back and (rare for Cassel) conflict-avoidant.
• Pierre Niney (Theo): Mr. Count of Monte Cristo himself, pretty much sidelined, jumping from wronged lover to aggressor, depending on whether you’re inside or outside Sylvie’s head.
• Catherine Deneuve: Gold star just for showing up as Sylvie’s publisher, dropping possibly the most on-point line of the whole film: 'This is all too melodramatic and old-fashioned.'

French Cinema Stereotypes, For Better or Worse

The whole production feels stuck in an earlier era—the kind of movie that lingers in cafes, fixates on paranoia and jealousy, and could almost pass for a parody of French melodrama if only it had a few more cigarettes. Farhadi himself clearly wanted to pay tribute to Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Love, but where that film still feels vital forty years on, this one feels like it walked out of a mothball-filled attic and forgot to leave.

There’s also a weird through-line about Sylvie’s own writing—she’s supposed to be this esteemed author, but when you hear pieces of her story, it sounds more like amateur fan fiction. Add in the mind-numbing wildlife project the foley artist characters are working on (think the world’s most boring screensaver in movie form), and you start to wonder if everyone involved is in on a joke or just running on autopilot.

The Verdict

It isn't all bad—Efira does what she can, Cassel has some fun against type, and Deneuve is always worth seeing. But mostly, Parallel Tales is exactly what Sylvie gets accused of: dated, overcooked, and somehow never interesting, despite its potential. Farhadi can do brilliant work (A Separation is evidence), but this one is best skipped unless you’re an absolute completist.

If this movie doesn’t become just a minor blip in Farhadi’s career, I’ll be shocked.

Rating: 5/10