 |
| Bejo and Mossafa go digging in The Past. |
«««« The
Past (Le passé). Written and
directed by Asghar Farhadi. At select theaters.
Nothing is easy when it comes to the
films of Asghar Farhadi. If their emotional power makes them sometimes hard to
watch, and their persistent complexity hard to summarize, they're also hard to
dismiss from one's mind. Many viewers in the West found this out when his last
film, A Separation, earned wide
attention (and the first Oscar for an Iranian film) in 2012. Farhadi is up to
the same, brilliant tricks in his latest, The
Past.
This one is set in a suburb outside of
Paris. Marie-Anne (The Artist's
Bérénice Bejo)
welcomes her
Iranian soon-to-be ex-husband Ahmad (Ali Mossafa) to town on the occasion of
signing their final divorce papers. It's supposed to be a legal formality, maybe
mixed with a little wistfulness, but matters soon become more complicated. Marie-Anne
has conceived a child by her current boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim) the
French-Arab owner of a dry cleaning business. Samir, in turn, is still married
to Céline (Aleksandra Klebanska). Céline lies in a coma after attempting
suicide--an act that may or may not have been provoked by knowledge of Samir's
infidelity. That, at least, is the assumption of Marie-Anne's teenage daughter
(Pauline Burlet), who is determined to sabotage her mother's engagement.
This may sound like the stuff of
genuine soap-opera, but The Past
feels like nothing of the kind. As Ahmad is drawn into the travails of the
woman he once abandoned, the film becomes a kind of archaeological
investigation of acts and feelings whose consequences are never what they seem.
In Farhadi's script, no momentous revelation supplies the final word. Each
leads only to new puzzles, new layers of significance, that will frustrate
viewers seeking faster, more conventional drama.
A social conservative, Iranian or
otherwise, can find much to deplore in these characters' "European"
disregard of traditional arrangements--the affairs, the out-of-wedlock pregnancies,
the toll on the lovers' small children. Yet the modernist in Farhadi sees no
easy solutions in the arbitrary strictures of the past, either. As in A Separation, there are only the
inevitable passions that come with living with others, and the compromises we
make to navigate them. In this, the melancholy and patient Ahmad, obliged to
surrender his husbandly prerogatives, yet sift through his ex-wife's emotional
wreckage, seems to stand in best for Farhadi himself.
Following the silent-era antics she
mastered for The Artist, Bejo shows
mastery at a miniaturist's scale here. (She won the 2013 Best Actress Award at
Cannes for this role). Farhadi likewise draws detailed, believable performances
from the children in the cast (Burlet, Elyes Aguis, Jeanne Jestin). In a season
of strong performances, you will not see a better acted/directed film this
year, which makes its omission from the Best Foreign Language film Oscar
nominees for 2013 especially puzzling.
In snubbing Farhadi, the Academy at
least has something in common with the mullahs in Iran, who forced his
countrymen to cancel the Tehran celebration for his 2012 Oscar win. Whether
they're wearing Rolexes or turbans, swine have trouble savoring pearls.
©
2014 Nicholas Nicastro
No comments:
Post a Comment