CANNES, FRANCE—Misdeeds big and small combine with explosive impact on a Parisian family in Asghar Farhadi’s The Past, the first clear Palme d’Or contender at Cannes 2013.
World premiering Friday at the Cannes Film Festival, this new work by the Iranian writer/director plays almost like a sequel to A Separation,
Farhadi’s 2011 Oscar-winning marital drama. Shot in and around Paris,
it’s Farhadi’s first film made outside of Iran and his first to compete
for the Palme.
The characters are
different but imperiled marriage is still the theme, although the
complications are much more involved. There are two fraught unions,
break-ups in their final stages, and many more people are affected by
the outcomes.
As he did with A Separation,
Farhadi works like a master poker player, carefully revealing his cards
and building tension with each new bit of information. The advance
description of The Past as an “emotional social thriller” proves accurate.
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The film stars two previous Cannes acting discoveries, Bérénice Bejo of The Artist and Tahir Rahim of A Prophet, who play a romantic couple who currently live together and may one day tie the knot.
First they have to
untie other ones: Bejo’s Marie must finalize her divorce from Ahmad (Ali
Mosaffa), whom she’s been separated from for four years; Rahim’s Samir
is technically still married, but his wife lies in a coma in a hospital
bed, her past and future unclear.
Marie and Samir both
have children. She has two daughters from her first marriage, before
Ahmad, and Samir has a young son. The situation is about to get even
more complicated, because Ahmad has just arrived from Tehran for the
divorce court appearance, and against his better judgment, he’ll be
staying at the home of Marie and Samir.
Such are the tangles
of modern romance, and things get even more twisted as each of the
participants reveals details about themselves and others that will
affect how each of them feels about the others.
Past misdeeds and
misunderstandings are uncovered, some big and some small, but each with
the potential for disruption. A sage old character observes that no
matter how important things may seem at the time, “Life goes on without
you or me.”
A potent combination of quality directing, acting and writing, there’s a bright future for The Past, not just as a potential Palme d’Or winner come May 26 but also as a good bet as a TIFF offering come September.
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