REVIEWS Marie (Bejo) and her boyfriend, Samir (Rahim), feel the tension once her estranged husband resurfaces. <strong>The</strong> Past Berenice Bejo shines in a superbly lensed in-competition drama from A Separation’s Asghar Farhadi BY DEBORAH YOUNG Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi pursues his exploration of guilt, choice and responsibility in a superbly written, directed and acted drama that commands attention every step of the way. As in his previous work, the story is set within a family, and children once again are the main victims. Here, however, Farhadi’s nearly flawless screenplay forgoes the explosive shocks that electrified Fireworks Wednesday and About Elly and drove A Separation on to win the best foreign language Oscar. <strong>The</strong> Past plays like a low-key adagio in the hands of a masterful pianist, who knows how to give every note its just nuance and how every single phrase affects all the rest. A surprisingly dynamic, unsentimental central performance from <strong>The</strong> Artist’s charming Berenice Bejo should help audiences relate to the tale, which co-stars Ali Mosaffa and Tahar Rahim in fine performances. Though set in France, the story unfolds entirely in interiors, specifically a rambling house on the outskirts of Paris that is as full of doors and windows as the Tehran apartment of A Separation. At the request of his wife, Marie (Beho), from whom he’s been separated for four years, Ahmad (Mosaffa) returns from Iran to finalize their divorce. He doesn’t know what a hornet’s nest he’s walking into. Viewers are kept on their toes trying to figure out the tangle of adult relationships, which have left a trail of insecure children in their wake. Throughout most of the film, Ahmad is the calm, balanced observer who sees everything that’s going on with Marie, her new boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim), and the three kids they live with. But even the good psychologist Ahmad holds some surprises in reserve. <strong>The</strong> children themselves are not innocent, not “free from stain” one might say, to touch on a major plot point. But from Farhadi’s POV they are always the losers in their parents’ battles. When Marie picks Ahmad up at the airport, their awkward distance instantly is defined by them talking through a thick wall of glass. <strong>The</strong> fact that she’s driving a borrowed car tips Ahmad off that there’s another man in her life, a fact soon confirmed by little Lea (Jeanne Jestin) and Fouad (Elyes Aguis). Instead of booking him into a hotel, Marie insists he stay in their house, quite an awkward thing with the handsome, morose Samir around. <strong>The</strong> two men do their best to shuffle civilly through their first meeting at breakfast. <strong>The</strong> tension in the household, however, gradually rises as ugly truths will out. Samir runs a dry cleaner not far from the pharmacy where Marie works. Fouad is his son by Celine, his French wife who has been in a coma for eight months. Fouad likes living at Marie’s house with his playmate Lea, despite the fact that Marie is nervous and fiery-tempered, going overboard with the kids when they misbehave. Ahmad, who turns out not to be anybody’s father, meanwhile has a wonderfully persuasive way with them, a talent that will draw him deeply into a hidden family drama worthy of Michael Haneke. He’s particularly close to the 16-year-old Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who has been acting very strangely lately, staying away from the house and brimming over with hostility for her already edgy mom. Marie charges him with finding out what’s wrong with the girl. Reluctantly, but with the skill of a TV detective, Ahmad investigates. <strong>The</strong>re are a few red herrings, like Marie’s sprained wrist, which coupled with her violent temper strongly suggests child beating. Worse than physical violence, however, is the poisonous climate of adult secrets of which the teenage Lucie seems to be a part: Why is Samir’s wife in the hospital in a seemingly irreversible coma, for instance, and what is the role played by each of the characters in her tragedy? <strong>The</strong> most fascinating thing about the script is the way it gradually unpeels motivation without taking sides; in fact, neither Bejo’s unbridled mother and lover, Mosaffa’s distanced outsider who has abandoned the family, nor Rahim’s morose adulterer act outside normal social mores. At the same time, the drama — which in other respects could have been performed as a play — is brilliantly heightened by the camerawork of D.P. Mahmoud Kalari, lending an intimate intensity and symbolic punch to virtually every scene. In Competition Cast Berenice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa, Pauline Burlet Director-screenwriter Asghar Farhadi 130 minutes THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 56
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