Film review: Parallel Tales – Paris-set drama with Isabelle Huppert

Parallel Tales (2026)

Dir: Asghar Farhadi

Starring Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is a leading figure in world cinema, with Best Foreign Film Oscars for A Separation (2012) and The Salesman (2017). He joins Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman among the few directors to have won the award more than once.

For his latest film, set in Paris and in French, Farhadi has assembled a stellar cast including Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel and Pierre Niney, with Catherine Deneuve (now 82) making a memorable cameo.

Huppert plays novelist Sylvie, who lives in a cluttered apartment and spies on neighbours through a telescope for creative inspiration. She decides her new story will feature ‘Anna’ – the name she gives Efira’s character, who works in a sound effects studio alongside Cassel’s ‘Pierre’ and Niney’s ‘Christophe’.

Sylvie also builds an autobiographical story around the claim – whether true or imagined – that her father once used the same telescope to spy on her mother’s lover, who lived next door to ‘Pierre’ and his family. Her story then imagines the three colleagues embarking on a ménage-à-trois which, bien sûr, also unfolds in real life through the telescope.

The arrival of an ex-con (Adam Bessa) to clean up her flat sees things become rather more intriguing and these ‘parallel tales’ converge. Not a Farhadi classic, but diverting and superbly acted.

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