You have to
take Bérénice Bejo’s Best Actress award at Cannes with a grain of salt. They’re
gonna give it to a Frenchie anytime it’s remotely conceivable.
As Marie, a wife and mother whose estranged husband, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), comes to Paris to finalize their divorce, Bejo gives a performance that’s fine but forgettable; it doesn’t stand out for good or ill. Mentioning it in the same breath with, for example, Cate Blanchett’s career-defining work in “Blue Jasmine” would be inconceivable.
As Marie, a wife and mother whose estranged husband, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), comes to Paris to finalize their divorce, Bejo gives a performance that’s fine but forgettable; it doesn’t stand out for good or ill. Mentioning it in the same breath with, for example, Cate Blanchett’s career-defining work in “Blue Jasmine” would be inconceivable.
The theme of
“A Separation” director Asghar Farhadi’s new film is incomplete information,
and the effect of such lacunae on our interpersonal relationships. As a
symbolist, nuance is not Farhadi’s stock in trade. He opens “The Past” with
Marie and Ahmad, unsuccessfully attempting to communicate through a transparent
but soundproof airport wall. Two hours and twenty minutes later, he ends the
film with his third main character, Marie’s new boyfriend Samir (the always dependable
Tahar Rahim), looking for one response to a stimulus and entirely missing
another.
Samir, it
turns out, is still married, but his wife lies in a hospital bed in a coma whence
she is unlikely ever to waken. We learn first that she committed suicide, then
the horrific method she chose, then the timing of and (perhaps mistaken) motivations
behind the act. These pieces of information come out in conversations and
confrontations among the three leads and three children: Marie’s daughters
Lucie and Lea (Pauline Burlet and Jeanne Justin), and Samir’s son Fouad (Elyes
Aguis, who turns out to give the strongest performance in the picture).
The effect
of these sensational revelations, each timed about fifteen minutes from the one
that precedes it, is to cause critics to rhapsodize about layers and shades of
meaning. But that’s not what’s really going on here. Farhadi’s keeping information
from us that would all emerge in a 50-minute family therapy session, then
rationing it out in dribs and drabs. He’s like a child who slowly completes a
connect-the-dots puzzle, turns to his assembled guests, and shows it off as
art.
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