An Iranian man deserts his French wife and two children to return to his homeland in the French drama, The Past.
Audio Reviews
The film centers on Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), who after four years, comes back home to complete the formalities on his divorce to Marie (Bérénice Bejo). But this trip that should just take a day becomes more complicated when he peers under the surface to discover a web of secrets that immediately sucks him in.
His wife has been living with another married man, Samir (A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim), and his precocious young child, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), while his wife lays in a comatose state. In addition to this complicated dynamic is the fact that Marie’s oldest daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) from another marriage, resents her mother’s choice and has begun to spiral out of control.
Further complicating the fact is that Ahmad still has feelings for Marie but will honor her wishes because you truly feel he wants her to be happy. When Marie asks him to talk with Luce, who he has a great relationship with, Ahmad agrees and discovers a secret that could not only destroy her mother’s happiness but unsettle Samir as well.
This intelligent and mature, yet busy screenplay and direction by Asghar Farhadi creates a complex dynamic that he does a wonderful job of simplifying. Each of the principal characters is unhappy but quietly soldiering through hoping for a quick resolution. Marie wants a divorce so that she can move on with Samir but instead of putting her soon-to-be-ex-husband in a hotel, she puts him up in a room upstairs in her house sleeping with Fouad, above from her and Samir. Irritated that Ahmad and Marie have begun having tensions, Samir feels that the two still have unresolved issues and Ahmad can’t seem to cut his ties with his wife and slowly finds himself pulled back into her drama and confusion.
In a performance much different from her hopeful, cheerful persona in her Oscar-nominated film, The Artist or her small role in the French drama, Populaire, Bejo is a woman trapped between two seemingly similar men who dote and take care of her but because of her own shortcoming can’t truly make her happy. Both male leads, Mosaffa and Rahim are drawn as compassionate men, who accommodate each other for the sake of the woman that they both love.
The only shortcoming of this story is that it feels like Farhadi can’t stop tacking on additional subplots that, although are interesting, needlessly inflate the length of the film. Sometimes less is more and in this case it would have slightly improved the end product but regardless, The Past is another gem from France that has been churning out a stream of winning dramas that have provided a wonderful diversion from the bigger, noisier American counterparts.
Grade: B