In the French movie The Past, a French woman has requested that her estranged husband return from Iran to expedite their divorce; he obliges and walks into a family life that gets messier by the minute. Why does she suddenly want the divorce right now? Can she marry her current boyfriend? Who are the fathers of all of her kids? What happened to her current boyfriend’s wife – and why? As the answers are revealed one-by-one, our understanding of the events and characters evolve.
This shifting viewpoint is similar that into writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning Iranian film A Separation, which I summarized as “brilliant film/tough to watch”. Farhadi’s art reflects life at its messiness – especially how life resists our desire to make everything tidy and symmetrical. It all makes for a compelling drama – we care about each character and what’s going to happen. Each development further complicates the story – all the way up to the movies final shot, which adds another pivotal complication.
The Artist’s Berenice Bejo won Best Actress at Cannes for playing the woman completely overstressed by the pressures that her own choices have brought upon her; (her careworn character is just about 180 degrees from Peppy Miller in The Artist). The acting is uniformly excellent, and especially by the child actors.
One more thing – in writing and directing the part of the teenage daughter, Farhadi shows that he has a superb understanding of teenage girls. He captures the mix of self-absorption, volatile unpredictability and the paradoxical yearning for both independence and parental protection, while avoiding turning the character into a sitcom brat. Indeed, he’s done it before, having directed his own teenage daughter to an excellent performance in A Separation. This is one of his most notable gifts as a filmmaker.
The realism of The Past may cause some viewers to reflect on their own family drama, so not everyone will find it enjoyable. Nevertheless, it’s an admirable and thought-provoking story told so very well – right up to that final shot.
