directed by Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011, 123‘

A separation, the latest Asghar Farhadi‘s film (About Elly, Fireworks Wednesday) and Golden Bear Winner at Berlin International Film Festival, carries us to the temporary Iran. Nader and Simin have totally different opinions about the future and about the conditions their daughter should grow up in. Simin wishes to leave the country but Nader wants to stay. His father is affected by Alzheimer and he can’t abandon him. The wife decides to leave the family so the father looks for a domestic help and hires a pregnant woman to take care of his father. However the situation takes an unpredictable turn: thus we enjoy a complex story focusing on religion and social questions which reminds, by its structure, a crime story. The film ends where it starts : the opening as well as the closing sequence twist about the daughter Termeh.

The story begins in the middle of the separation of the couple but the separation it’s mostly the cadre of the narration. This picture speaks more about the family complication in the Muslim (Persian) contemporary society than about a separation itself. It shows the cultural context in connection with the family, with the relationships and with the the religion. A separation is about the people identity and about the crossing the borders inside us. Is the false statement in the name of Koran worst than the false statement in the name of one‘s own family?

Asghar Farhadi serves up stirring story full of turnovers where one dialogue follow another one. Almost all the scenes are captured by hand-held camera, the cinematography is alive exactly as the story is. On one side the film is overloaded by the image instability, on the other side it allows to enjoy a few stationary moments where the viewer can approach the characters on the screen and share their emotions. Anyway, during a first projection the script won‘t allow the viewer to follow anything else than the story itself. It’s necessary to see the film more than once to enjoy the whole cinematic work behind the film but the question is, is the fully decoding of film work really necessary? This fresh approach to the film matter reflects the Iran film production of nowadays, which is considered like a most progressive and interesting film production of this days and where every film is different to the other one.