Director: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Berenice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa
With A Separation and now The Past, writer/director Asghar Farhadi is steadily emerging as one of the greatest contemporary dramatists of domestic chaos. Both are films about marriages that are ending not necessarily out of desire, but out of situational need, and both have plots which turn largely on one incident which gains deeper complexity each time it is returned to and which does not outright destroy the relationships at the story's core so much as cause deep fissures which slowly undermine the foundation of those relationships. The Past is a wholly engrossing film, building itself steadily, sensitively unfolding its secrets, and letting the performances of its principals blossom. Though not as celebrated as A Separation, The Past is a more than worthy follow-up.
