Le Passé (The Past).

Berenice Bejo has redeemed herself after the dreadful The Artist (2011) in a film where she is not only central to the story but in my opinion carries the film. Bejo plays Marie a woman whose demeanour emphasizes the meaning of stress, a woman who is about to go through her second divorce, She is pregnant again to Samir who shares her house located in a working class suburb of Paris, along with her 16 year old daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet) with whom see has no rapport, her youngest daughter Lea and his own rather disturbed son Fouad. Samir’s wife Celine has attempted to commit suicide and now is in a hospital bed in a coma and is not expected to survive. Enter Marie’s second husband Ahmad who she has not seen for four years, invited back to the family home to go through divorce proceedings but while he is there he is expected to solve Marie’s problems: work out why Lucie will not converse with her mother and advice on whether Samir is the right man to become her third husband. Not an easy task under such demanding circumstances.

 

Ahmad is expected to solve Marie's problems....

Asghar Farhadi latest movie, Le Passé (2013) follows the release in Europe of two very successful films, 2009’s About Elly and the much-respected award winning A Separation (2011) up there with the best of recent World Cinema releases and a film against which all his future body of work will be judged.

 

....including why her daughter will not speak to her....

This week first time host George Geddes, who I must say made a great job of it, introduced Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club screening of Le Passé. George pointed out to an attentive audience that the idea behind the Film Club was to enable film lovers to see good quality movies that were a little different from the popcorn and soft drink variety seen at mainstream theatres and this week’s film was a good example. He went on to tell us that this was the first of Farhadi’s six films to be shot outside of Iran, this time the location was Paris and its suburb of Sevran north east of the capital. (We gratefully avoid the Paris of Woody Allen!)  Written by this multi talented director it had to be translated from its native Persian to French. Other than the politics, western audiences are not familiar with Iran, only what we get to see from the heavily censored work of brave directors like Asghar Farhadi[1]. Although our host did point out that America operates its own censorship by not showing films from country’s it does not like!

 

....and whether she should marry the sullen Samir.

This ‘gently paced’ sombre movie did appear to be very much appreciated by the RBCFT audience when the movie was discussed after its screening but they were not very forth coming when asked why? But eventually agreed that the acting was very good and that the two younger children (Elyes Aguis and Jeanne Justin) played their roles with extreme professionalism and they were also greatly intrigued by the twists and turns of the story. But our knowledgeable audience did criticise the veracity of the undertitles.

 

Cannes 2013 where the film picked up two awards. 

I was not so sure, nothing wrong with the acting as I have said previously Bejo, who won Best Actress at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, was extremely good along with her fellow actors French born Tahar Rahim as the unsmiling Samir, an actor whose face is getting very well-known on the big screen with leading roles in A Prophet (2009), Free Men (2011) and Grand Central (2013), and the Iranian actor and director Ali Mosaffa who takes the part of Ahmad. And I did agree with what one critic opined that this fraught story was like a two-hour episode of the BBC series EastEnders with its microcosm of reallot. Sometimes you can’t always explain why a particular a film does not draw you in and this one certainly did not. Also I could not raise any sympathy for the characters, excluding the children who are always ‘the victims’ in any disenfranchised relationship, who all seemed to be failed human beings in some respect even the ‘too good to be true’ Ahmad whose past misdemeanours were only hinted at. But I believe that from reading various reviews that I am in the minority – still you can’t win them all.

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[1] In a recent interview regarding creative restrictions in Iran Asghar Farhadi commented as follows: “There is a limitation for everybody. Each filmmaker before making his movies has to send their script to have it validated, and then once the film is made you repeat the same process. But then you have this question: why do so many good films come out of the country even though web have this system? When everyone looks at this progress, they are only focused on the power of censorship; they forget the creative power of the filmmakers. There is a permanent struggle between the two: sometimes it’s the censorship that wins, sometimes it’s the filmmakers”

About Elly

Winding up my ramble on Asghar Farhadi’s break through film, A Separation (2011) which won a very well deserved Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, I wrote that I was hoping to sample further works from this Iranian director, at this weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club I got my wish. A short introduction from our host for the evening, Mr Steven Pickering, was followed by the film Farhadi made prior to A Separation, About Elly (2009) that has finally being released in the UK.  With another of his films, Fireworks Wednesday (2006) which won the Gold Hugo at the 2006 Chicago International Film Festival, due out on DVD fairly soon.

A weekend away for s group of friends!

Steve informed us that this Persian language film we were about to watch was critically well received in its own country and had fortunately not offended Iran’s ruling Ayatollahs who had recently censored and jailed one of Farhadi’s directorial colleague’s.  In fact one year after its release it was voted the 4^th greatest Iranian movie of all time by the National Society of Iranian Critics!

Elly last seen flying a Kite.

What begins, as a straightforward relationship drama becomes what Steve describes as a ‘Hitchcockian mystery thriller’? Its involves three middle class couples from Tehran who are old friends from college Amir and Sepideh, Peyman and Shohreh and Manouchehr and Nassi who drive with their children to the seaside for the weekend. Also accompanying them are Nassi’s brother Ahmad, recently divorced and back from living in Germany and Sepideh’s daughters’ schoolteacher Elly. Sepidah persuaded Elly to come hoping to do some matchmaking between her and the handsome Ahmad. Things begin to go a little pear shaped when the villa that Sepideh had booked for the weekend is only available for one night, which apparently Sepideh already knew! She tells the landlady that Ahmad and Elly are newly weds and therefore securing a villa on the very edge of the Caspian Sea.  Events take a turn for the worse the following day when Peyman’s son has to be rescued from drowning and Elly goes missing.

Has Peyman's really lost his son?

This is a film primarily about the Tehrani middleclass and how they adapt modern life to their faith and how a small lie can lead to a tremendous untruth that can effect the lives of many people, something that could happen any where in the world but when a religion takes its laws seriously it can have terrible repercussions, far more than say in this country where things like infidelity are not taken seriously any longer.

Is all hope fading that they can retrieve what the friends have lost?

Although a little long this psychological thriller has an absorbing storyline helped by the superb direction of Asghar Farhadi[1] and his handling of the extremely good cast who with the exception of Peyman Moodi, who plays Peyman in this movie and played Nader in A Separation, were all Iranian born. Iranian made films, at least the one’s I’ve seen, do seem to lack humour but I wonder if that’s in the translation? Farhadi assumes his audience to be intelligent people therefore he does not provide us with a musical soundtrack and we are left to determine the ‘mood’ of the film ourselves, I for one appreciate the complement.

The cast at the Berlin Film Festival.

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[1] His efforts earned him the Silver Bear for Best director at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival.

A Separation.

Simin and Nadar discuss the pending divorce.

I’m not sure what it will mean to the future of the Iranian film industry when in December 2011 Iran’s Council of Public Culture announced that they made the country’s largest organisation for filmmakers illegal and arrested six of Iran’s documentary filmmakers because of ‘collaboration with the BBC’. One of the most memorable Iranian films I’ve seen and one I would certainly recommend is the award winning Its Winter (2006). This deeply moving piece of cinema told the story of a man who leaves his wife and daughter in Tehran to search for work abroad. Months pass and the family hear no word from him. Meanwhile a stranger arrives in town also in search of work, whose eye is taken by the beautiful young wife who it appears no longer has a husband. Made with non-actors and described by its director Rafi Pitt as neo-realism the film remains with you for a long time. Pitt’s latest film The Hunter (2010) is not as good, although in a political sense it’s a meaningful film with a background narrative of political rhetoric and implied governmental pressure on the Iranian citizens, but as pure entertainment it’s sadly lacking. Another Iranian director I’m familiar with is Abbas Kiarostami who worked with our own Ken Loach and Italian director Ermanno Olmi on Tickets (2005) originally intended to be made as a single feature film. It was Kiarostami who suggested the idea of three separate stories and invited Olmi and Ken Loach to take part in this project. Total freedom was given to each director except for two rules: each of the sequences should be in some way connected and all three stories must take place on a train.  Kiarostami went on to direct Certified Copy (2009) an observational snapshot of human behaviour set in Tuscany, not the most absorbing film but it did win Juliette Binoche a Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Simin has no idea which way to turn?

None of these films could possible have prepared me for A Separation (2011). May I say from the outset that the universal acclaim that it has received is so well deserved, unlike some over hyped BAFTA and Academy Award nominations?  When this film opens we find a middle class couple, married for fourteen years, sitting staring at the camera discussing with the unseen official they’re pending divorce. Simin (Leila Hatami), who has been granted the legal right, wants to take their eleven year old daughter Termeh (played by the directors real life daughter Sarina Farhadi) out of Iran to bring her up in another county where laws involving women are not are not as harsh but cannot without her husbands permission. Although she wants him to accompany them Nader (Peyman Moaadi) refuses telling the official that he has stay in the country to look after his elderly father who has a debilitating type Alzheimer’s. Hence a divorce request that nether of them really wants. This first scene not only reveals the nature of the film and eventually its complexities but the scene as filmed puts us, the audience, in a judgmental position and this perspective is maintained through out the film.  

Nadar father requires constant care.

For the present Termeh lives in the Tehran apartment with her father and her grandfather, who is in need of constant care. Class and religion enter the equation when Nader employs a religiously devout lower class housekeeper, Razieh, to look after his elderly father when he is out to work. Problems arise when the new carer finds out that the old man wets himself on a regular basis and she has to get permission from her imam to change his clothes and wash him. One day Nadar returns from work early to finds his incontinent father lying on the floor, still tied to the bed, clearly very stressed and his carer no where to be seen. On her return the angry Nadar looses his temper with the women, who it turns out is pregnant, and quite literally ejects her from the apartment. Shortly after this incident she looses her unborn child.

Problems arise for everyone when Razieh excepts employment.

Asghar Farhadi is a forty-year-old Iranian screenwriter and film director who has previously won awards for his body of work including Fireworks Wednesday (2008) a portrait of three marriages set against the backdrop of the Persian New Year and About Elly (2009) about middle class relationships in modern day Iran. Asghar made his first 8mm short when he was 12 years old, making five more shorts before he went to university to study theatre something he became devoted to. It was at this stage that he started writing plays as well as directing theatre productions. When his radio plays became successful he was approached to write and direct for television which in turn led to a screenplay and he has remained in the world of cinema ever since. Theatre training and background has given his cinematic work a sense of drama, which can be seen quite clearly in A Separation mainly in the way he directs and handles his actors. The subject matter in these latter films involve Iran’s urban middle class, they’re day-to-day life and their somewhat complex problems. His filmic signature is to leave space between the lines, with no scene over written, so that the audience does not get to see everything, leaving them, and Iran’s censors, to use their own imagination. This intelligent filmmaker has to be very careful what he says and shows in his work. Also to avoid censorship problems Asghar Farhadi, unlike the best British filmmakers, does not implant a message in his work he raises questions only.

The Director.

Amongst its many plaudits his latest movie won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival along with group acting awards for both the male and female cast that again is well deserved. There are strong and well-written roles given to both the young children involved. This emotional domestic drama full of tension and pride gives us, as outsiders, an incite into the Iranian legal system and the Muslim faith. The film plays very much like a documentary and your privy to real life events all helped by the superb camera work that avoids being over intrusive but at the same time highlighting small significant details. I would deem it a criminal offence if you don’t watch this marvellous film and I for one hope to sample other work by Asghar Farhadi.