The Past (****)

The famous William Faulkner quote (“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”) applies here. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), an Iranian, has returned to France to finalize his divorce from Marie (Bérénice Bejo), a French woman with two daughters from an earlier relationship. Without wanting to, he inevitably becomes involved with the troubles Marie is having with the older daughter, who seems hostile to her mother’s new boyfriend for reasons that aren’t clear, and that prove not to be what they seem.

Most remarkable is the construction of the plot; its cleverness won’t surprise anyone who’s seen writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s previous film, the Oscar-winning A Separation. This French-language film was not nominated for the foreign-language film Oscar, but is equally rewarding. (Given its theme of impending divorce, it’s a thematic sequel, though the story is completely different.) Farhadi lets the truth come out like pieces in a puzzle, revealed in a series of confessions until what remains is the unknowable future. At first showing us the story through Ahmad’s eyes, Farhadi also shifts viewpoints, to the mother, to the daughters, and ultimately to the boyfriend.

This drama constructed like a thriller ends with an emotional question that a plot twist cannot answer but is nonetheless haunting.

IMDb link

viewed 1/30/14 7:00 at Ritz 5 and posted 2/26/14