There is an aporia with two aspects at the heart of Certified Copy. The first pertains to narrative, and whether the protagonists are married; the second pertains to genre, and whether we can take this film as a genuine instantiation of what Cavell has called a ‘comedy of remarriage’. The movie, which opens with a lecture on the importance of reproductions of works of art, will not let us solve either puzzle, but it won't let us give up on them: it repeatedly invites while consistently rebuking attempts at resolving them. This is especially frustrating because the puzzles are intertwined (such that resolving one might mean resolving the other). As it frustrates us, Certified Copy forwards the ambiguities of belonging and judgement that haunt concepts of genre, showing their bearing on questions of experience, authority, and scepticism.

In 1981's Pursuits of Happiness, Cavell – pre-empting in some ways the subsequent acceptance of popular culture as a field worthy of academic study – performed rich readings of Hollywood romantic comedies made between 1934 and 1949, taking them, if not quite as works of philosophy, then as philosophically serious works demanding philosophy's attention. He identified a subset of romantic comedies – more specifically a subset of screwball comedies – as members of a particular genre (or we might say – though it is notable that Cavell does not – subgenre). He calls it the Hollywood comedy of remarriage, including in it The Lady Eve (1941), It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Adam's Rib (1949), and The Awful Truth (1937). The Hollywood comedy of remarriage, Cavell says, distinguishes itself from a traditional romantic comedy “in casting as its heroine a married woman; and the drive of its plot is not to get the central pair together, but to get them back together, together again”.