A Separation (2011)

Directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini, Sarina Farhadi, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, Kimia Hosseini, Marila Zarei, Babak Karimi, Shirin Yazdanbakhsh. [PG-13]

A middle-class Tehran family: the mother (Hatami) wants them to leave Iran but the father (Moaadi) wants to stay so he can care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, so Hatami files for divorce, she temporarily moves back in with her parents while their conflicted daughter stays with her dad. The opening passages establish a familiar divisive setup, but the developing story and characters are specific, based on several of director Farhadi’s personal experiences, and for all of the universal themes and emotions in play, details from Iranian culture, customs, and laws play a significant part in where the narrative goes from there, a progression that is nearly impossible to guess. There are no saints or villains here, no travesties of justice or manipulative contrivances; it’s riveting storytelling that ends up being more about truth and perception than family binds or the casualties of marital dissolution. There’s a lot of anger here, much of it misplaced and impotent, but without the facts to support the reality of a critical incident (which will initially appear on the first viewing as careless filmmaking, but is actually intentionally shot, blocked and edited that way), it’s easy to sympathize with both sides. Credible, accessible, paced like a thriller, but packing an emotional wallop, and exiting on an ambiguous note that’s more thought-provoking than defeatist. Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

93/100