Anyone who’s been around for any length of time knows that the past is never dead and buried and that it can haunt you until the end of days. Asghar Farhadi’s new film, The Past, now playing in Toronto and Montreal, explores this perennial theme with subtlety and sensitivity.
Marie-Anne (Berenice Bejo), an attractive French woman in her mid to late 30s, is waiting to pick up her estranged Iranian husband at Paris’ airport. When he finally arrives, they greet each other cordially. But as she drives Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) to her home on the outskirts of Paris, they bicker. A couple whose marriage has informally ended, they intend to formalize the dissolution of their relationship with a divorce.
Much to his surprise, Marie-Anne invites Ahmad, whom she has not seen in four years, to stay at her house rather than in a hotel. Marie-Anne’s decision remains a mystery, given their testy relations and her intention to divorce Ahmad. What adds to the uncertainty is Marie-Anne’s new boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim), who has moved into her house in tandem with his young son, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), who doesn’t particularly like Anne-Marie.
So what is going on? If Ahmad is curious about this domestic arrangement, he conceals his curiosity remarkably well. However, he’s annoyed by her secrecy. She didn’t tell him about Samir, who’s at least several years younger than Marie-Anne.
Ahmad, who seems like a decent fellow, is delighted to renew his bonds with Marie-Anne’s two daughters from a previous marriage, Lea (Jeanne Jestin) and Lucie (Pauline Burlet). The girls enjoy his company, but Fouad, a prickly boy, is hardly enamored of his presence. Farhadi, whose last movie was A Separation, develops these relationships deftly.
The film takes a dark turn when Lucie, 16, discloses she’s unhappy at home and dislikes Samir. Ahmad passes on her concerns to Marie-Anne, who blows up at him. “You haven’t changed,” she says an an accusatory tone before revealing she’s pregnant with Samir’s child.
Farhadi never really tells us why Marie-Anne and Ahmad were incompatible as man and wife, so it’s left to a viewer’s imagination to put the pieces together.
The Past grows yet more complex as Ahmad discovers that Samir is a married man and that his wife, now in a vegetative state in a hospital, tried to commit suicide. Rather than distancing himself from these roiling complications, Ahmad plunges deeper into the whirlpool.
From Lucie, Ahmad learns about an exchange of incriminating e-mails, an extra-marital affair and an attempted suicide. Samir, in turn, is shocked and angered by a new revelation presented by Naima (Sabrina Ouazani), an employee in his dry cleaning store.
The Past, which is two hours and 10 minutes in length, moves along at a leisurely pace. Farhadi is in no hurry to tie up loose ends and occasionally dwells on what appears to be irrelevancies, like the correct method of eating a specialr Iranian dish that Ahmad, a fine cook, has just whipped up.
The performances are superb. Bejo exhibits an admirable range of emotions. Mosaffa is the acme of cool. Burlet’s maturity and beauty are majestic. Rahim, usually, is a study in restraint.
This is a film about the collision of memories and grievances, and in Farhadi’s competent hands, it quietly rises to the occasion.
http://youtu.be/J2mwOuYSnYM