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Very well executed

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

As you may recall, the "Best Foreign Language Film" Academy Award winning director - with his film "A Separation" - Asghar Farhadi, has been the guest of Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival recently. While Farhadi attended to this year's Cannes Film Festival with his film "The Past", Berenice Bejo won the "Special Jury Award", an event that was applauded by the cinema lovers. Stating that he admires the cinematography of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Yılmaz Güney, in this film, Farhadi turns his camera to the complicated relationship between a troubled French woman and her Iranian husband. Combining the elements, which he generally gives shape using details, with different storytelling techniques, Farhadi turns a script with a simple essence into a complicated story. Due to political and ethical issues, Farhadi shot this film, which has a half dramatic, half melodramatic story line, in France. Therefore the film has received no influence from Iranian culture. While he has no intention to give a message, in reality, Farhadi has swept the message under the carpet, as if he tries to add a mystery to the message. Instead of positioning the story in view of audience's perception, Farhadi prefers a free storytelling method and tells audience to understand whatever they want. He really doesn't empathize with the audience; because he prefers contradictions. His choice on completing the overexposed and underexposed scenes with contrast colors is the most conspicuous evidence of this preference. If I may say so, this is some kind of a trick to emphasize that this film is a French production. Even, he makes his characters estranged from us through "off screen" sound technique. Sometimes we can't hear the cues of the characters. Trying to keep us in a distance from his characters, Farhadi makes it even harder by using long shots. As the phrase goes, the loud noise of the windshield wiper that gives the audience a headache and the extensive lighting that hurts the eyes within the long "car" scene makes us detached from the movie. There are so many logical fallacies in this 1:1:85 CinemaScope film of Farhadi. For example, showing Marie's tendency to violence blatantly turns the high angle shot into an average scene. For this was an intended end, we are convinced that Farhadi's main aim here is to create contrast. Putting Iranian men up against Marie, the French character of the movie, is the best example for this fact. In my opinion, it's interesting that antipathetic French women and friendly Iranian men melted in the same pot in this film. However, if film was not turned into a complex family drama with emotional stresses and exhausting dialogues, it may have been a delightful movie. Drawing attention to the cultural conflict between French and Iranian characters, Farhadi relates Marie's dissatisfaction that leads to changing husbands frequently to her depression. Of course, Marie is too blind to detect her own depression. In fact, she claims that her lover's wife was in depression. Then, why does she always choose Iranian men? In my opinion, Marie doesn't know what she wants. And this indecisiveness has brought her into this current situation. Also a significant detail should not be forgotten: Marie is a selfish person. She is also prone to violence. For Marie, everything is like a game. Being too much preoccupied to a degree that she cannot see how twisted relationships, lies and schemes destroy her life, Marie, in fact, runs away, because she doesn't want to face her past. May be, the effects of the incidents, happened in her past, to her present are the factors that steals time from her future. Therefore, while living in seclusion, Marie has a private life, unknown to others. As we all know, if we don't solve our problems of the past fundamentally, we can't live today in its fullest; always some problem appears before us and when we try to cover our problems, we turn into someone like Marie. After all, is this not the reason of Marie's proneness to violence? After living separated from his wife for four years, Ahmad returns from Tehran to Paris, to complete the papers for the divorce. During this short visit, he notices the problematic relationship between his ex-wife Marie and her daughter Lucie. While trying to fix this problem, Ahmad will cause an important secret to be revealed. Also Ahmad feels a great sorrow due to the upcoming marriage of Marie with another Iranian man. Thereby, the lives of two Iranian men intersect. OK, it's a good thing having the paths of these two Iranian men get crossed, but the fact that the actor playing Samir, Marie's lover, is not actually an Iranian upset the apple cart. Also, wrong expectations did not only wreck their lives, but kind of destroyed them. It's impossible for us to learn what they feel. We can't interpret their motivations. And just at that point, obscurity comes into play. As a matter of fact, the things experienced in the past were meant to be and they were right for the day. What gave shape to their current personalities and wisdom are that experiences. But the message failed to be understood correctly. As a conclusion: While trying to stretch the story of a family, Farhadi disrupts the integrity of the film and therefore fails at the end. If we try to find out why Farhadi failed to give a proper ending to the movie after telling so many stories, the answer would be that Farhadi probably tried to end his film like typical French movies. For nothing has resolved, all is left to our interpretation. Some of us may have thought that the director has thrown a curve and some may have thought that all the themes presented on the screen were not given a shared conclusion. Then, did we watch this movie for nothing? No. We saw how a protagonist did hit rock bottom in detail. That side of the film was quite successful.

The Iranian director Asghar Farhadi exploded onto the international film scene with the release of his 2011 film A Separation, the film received endless critical praise, topping countless critics list for the best of the year, and A Separation became the first Iranian film to ever win the Academy Award for best foreign language film, and was even nominated for best original screen play. So naturally there was a lot of hype for Farhadi's next film. People were dying to know what his next film was going to be, and if he could top A Separation. The answer to the first of these two questions is The Past, and the answer to the second is no, Farhadi was not able to top A Separation. At least not yet.The Past begins with Ahmad (played by Ali Mosaffa) returning to Paris to finalize the divorce with his wife Marie. (played by Berenice Bejo) Because Marie would like to move on and marry the owner of laundromat, Samir. (played by Tahar Rahim) Whose former wife tried to kill herself, but now lies in a comma at a hospital. Samir and his young son, Fouad (played by Elyes Aguis) have already moved in with Marie and her two children from a previous marriage, the elder of the two being Lucie (played by Pauline Burlet) a teenager who doesn't get along with her mother or Samir, and instead prefers her step father Ahmad. The film follows all these characters as they try to work out all of there differences and resolve all of the things they did to each other in the past. And as the film goes on we discover that all of the characters have more than a few skeletons in their closets.Asghar Farhadi has a very distinct and unique style, he has a strong focus on realism and showing things as they are. He stripes the film down to their basics, removing any fancy/stylized cinematography, like A Separation The Past does not have a score or soundtrack. His style is very similar to that of The Dardenne brothers or Abbas Kiarostami. But Farhadi instead has much more of a focus on the complexities of the human emotions that well can all feel and relate to. There are no heroes or villains in his films, instead there are just people trying to do their best. Farhadi relies a lot on his actors, they have to have dramatic range and be able to show several different emotions at once in order for the point of his film to come across. And while every single actor in A Separation was spot on, there are some weaker performances in The Past.But the acting is really only a tiny issue most of the actors are great there are just a few wishy-washy ones. The biggest problem I have with The Past is that the plot is so complex and confusing that it does gets hard to tell who's mad at who, and why they're mad. Which is something that we need to know if the film is going to have an impact on the audience. If you pay close attention you will easily be able to track with the plot just fine, but there are so many different characters and they all have intricate relationships with each other, that it becomes difficult to get emotionally invested when you are still trying to figure who did what to who and why. I want to be clear The Past isn't a bad film because it has a confusing plot, it's just a weaker film because it relies on you getting emotionally involved in the film, and it's confusing plot makes it difficult to get involved. Several great films have much more confusing plots, but those films don't put a lot of emphasis on emotional connection, at least not in the same simple way in which Farhadi does.In the end I would say that the Past is not as good of a film as A Separation. It's not as emotional or as groundbreaking as that film, and a lot of The Past ends up feeling like A Separation, which obviously means that it's going to be good, but just not as good as A Separation. But it is still worth seeing especially if you liked A Separation, there good performances and several different scenes that have the simple beauty of A Separation. 6.8/10

This is the movie that Bérénice Bejo won Best actress for at the Cannes Film Festival. While I liked her performance, I would not say that she was really this overwhelmingly good. Tahar Rahim showed his potential and my favorite display here was by Ali Mosaffa. "Le passé" is director Asghar Farhadi's next project after his Best Foreign Langue feature winner "Jodaeiye Nader az Simin".Basically you could describe it as a relationship drama. The central female character has a new boyfriend and her ex-husband returns from Iran to France to fulfill the divorce. Obviously the questions arise to what extent she still has feelings for him and if he has some for her and how he gets along with her new man etc. In order to avoid tensions her new boyfriend has to move out for a while, so the two men can't clash and get in trouble, but obviously that only works well for a short amount of time. However, there is not much dispute between the two, actually there only is during one situation which is about repairing a sink. And as if this was not complicated enough already, her new boyfriend also has his own shadows in the past, namely his wife who is in a coma and who he obviously still has feelings for.While I enjoyed most of the film, I did not really like the whole laundrette storyline and I feel Farhadi could have come up with something more convincing than the letter references. The daughter, who was an essential domino in this part of the movie and pretty much the connection between the comatose wife and the female main character played by Bejo did not really convince me with her performance. It was all too showy and inconsistent that it sometimes felt as if there was a lack of authenticity. Early on, it was not too easy to understand who was who and how they were all related to one another.Despite these criticisms, it turns out a pretty good movie. The final scene at the hospital involving Rahim's character is possibly the emotional highlight, the performances are mostly quality and I also liked how all characters are dysfunctional and have their flaws. If you don't look beyond the surface you may think that Mosaffa's character was a bit of a saint, but then you realize, he's not perfect either. He left his wife and children, did not appear to a date they agreed on in the past etc. This movie is certainly worth a watch, especially if you liked Bejo in The Artist, enjoyed Farhadi's previous work or are just interested in what Iranian cinema looks like these days.

Asghar Farhadi has once again proved how talented he is with the family dramas. The movie right from the start keeps offering viewers something about their lives that adds to the whole picture of the situation. It very nakedly expresses how indecisive humans can get and how unknowingly we become a part of complexities that exhaust us. The movie very diplomatically points at no one as the villain or the hero, very much like his last film or like many of the acclaimed dramas that have come out over the years. The quick sands of relations that pull us deep so slowly and the next moment we are stuck as much as we try to move. The layers are intertwined in a poetic fashion that help us deeply understand each one of the characters and their ordeal and yet blame no one for the situation. The acting stayed flawless throughout, justifying every inch of the master piece writing. The editing was sharp and keeps us focused without letting us realize any of the transitions with major gaps in the tensions. The beauty of the direction lies in how Asghar succeeds in turning a drama with elements of a thriller. The sheer consistency in his direction makes us viewers wait for his next with as much anticipation that he left us with after his last Oscar award winning drama, "A Separation".