The great Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is back in Cannes competition for a fifth time with his first film in five years and arguably one that ranks with his very best. That is a high bar since two of his movies, 2011’s A Separation and 2016’s The Salesman, both went on to win the Best Foreign Language (now International) Feature Academy Award. His most recent film, A Hero, took the Grand Prix in Cannes in 2021.

Returning with the gripping, cleverly reimagined Parallel Tales and working again outside his native country, Farhadi has come up with a French movie that is wickedly entertaining, a twisty and smart tale “freely” inspired by director Krzyszof Kieslowski’s legendary 10- hour television series Dekalog. Not wanting to do the entire 10 episodes, all based on the Ten Commandments, he chose Episode Six (later expanded to A Short Film About Love) to inspire a full-length feature film for which he took its basic idea of a lovestruck man spying on the neighboring woman in an apartment across the street.

But what Farhadi, working on the screenplay with his brother Saeed, has accomplished is to go with the spying premise and put it in a whole new, quite complicated context here as a novelist, Sylvie (Isabelle Huppert), uses her telescope to peep at an apartment with three people just across the Paris avenue from her messy rat-infested home with a lifetime of books and writing piled up in every corner.

Unlike the Kieslowski version, however, this is not a love story but rather one about creativity and imagination. Her need to spy is simply her method to get inspiration from real life for her completely made up fiction. In fact, the three people work in sound design and foley and are colleagues renting the apartment for their work, a current National Geographic-style wildlife documentary. Sylvie can only watch though, she can’t listen, so she imagines a torrid love affair between a married man and his mistress taking place after the other man leaves. Of course it couldn’t be further from the truth for Nicholas (Vincent Cassel), his brother Theo (Pierre Niney) and Nita (Virginie Efira), who happily work creating sounds to add to the picture rolling in front of them. In fantasy sequences the three actors also play the characters, Pierre, Christophe, and Anna, that we see Sylvie creating as she types away in front of her window.

Urging Sylvie to clean up the place so it can be sold, Celine, a half-owner, convinces her to hire an assistant, Adam (Adam Bessa), for the heavy lifting. This is when things start to go awry as Adam takes on a genuine interest in Sylvie’s creative endeavors, going much further than anyone should by taking to spying on the neighbors himself, even managing to put himself in position at the neighborhood cafe in order to meet Nita and actually claim authorship for a manuscript Sylvie had tossed out of frustration. He purposely leaves it behind hoping she picks it up. It doesn’t take long for Nita to realize Anna is actually her. Adam’s devious plan and meddling soon sets everything, and everyone, spiraling out of control.

Although this is all admittedly inspired by the story Kieslowski and his collaborator Krzyszof Piesiewicz created for Dekalog, you could have fooled me. Everything about this, particularly the spying part, seems positivily Hitchcockian. Anyone who has seen Rear Window might agree; the bones of that film seem to be here, and maybe since this is so very French, a little Chabrol thrown in for flavor. With the fantasy stuff there is even a bit of 1964’s frothy Paris When It Sizzles where Audrey Hepburn helped screenwriter William Holden act out scenes as he wrote them.

However it was intended, what Farhadi has brilliantly cooked up ultimately feels wholly original and deliciously crafted on every level. This is one of those crackerjack stories with great characters that grabs you right from the start and doesn’t let go for a minute. There isn’t a false step even in a tricky scenario like this one, which isn’t the case for most of the films I have seen so far pre-Cannes and on the ground here. This may be Farhadi’s best-ever in terms of style and pure picturemaking skill, and for me certainly his finest since A Separation.

Farhadi is aided splendidly by a perfectly chosen cast starting with the great Huppert who, per usual, inhabits this possessed writer with all the crankiness and creative drive of a true talent, just like the star herself. Veteran Cassel has never been better and is well matched with both an edgy Niney (The Count of Monte Cristo) and a sensational Efira, who has two films in Cannes this year the other being Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Soudain. All three expertly play two roles seamlessly. Maybe the most intriguing cast member is Bessa, whose ambitious and slippery assistant is the key to everything coming unwound, and this young actor nails it. In for one scene as Sylvie’s publisher is none other than Catherine Deneuve, and it is always nice to see her no matter how small the role.

Production-wise Parallel Tales is first rate, from Guillaume Deffontaine’s atmospheric Parisian cinematography (especially the sumptuous rain scenes), production designer Emmanuelle Duplay’s wonderfully lived-in apartments, and Kieslowski regular Zbigniew Preisner’s nicely matched score. Special shout-out to the sound team including designer Pierre Mertens, sound editors Paul Heymans and Mathieu Michaux, and mixer Thomas Gauder. In a movie depicting a sound team, and one where sound is so crucial, their work cannot be underestimated. Farhadi was especially interested in this aspect of the story — not just spying on your neighbor but actually hearing what is on the other side of that telescope. With the 100th anniversary next year in 2027 of the first talking picture and the introduction of sound to movies, this film stands as its own kind of tribute to the art.

Parallel Tales is a keeper, tales well told. Memento is the film’s French distributor.

Producers are Alexandre Mallet-Guy, Asghar Farhadi and David Levine.

Title: Parallel Tales
Festival: Cannes (Competition)
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Screenwriters: Asghar Farhadi and Saeed Farhadi
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, Adam Bessa, India Hair, Catherine Deneuve
Sales agents: UTA Independent Film (U.S.); Charades (international)
Running time: 2 hr 19 mins