Review of A Separation (2011) by Stuart K — 06 Feb 2015
Written, produced and directed by Asghar Farhadi (The Beautiful City (2004), About Elly (2009) and The Past (2013)), this drama from Iran is a powerful film filled with good performances and touching upon important issues like family loyalty and the effects that separation can do to a family.
It's a very intimate film, done with an almost documentary style feel, which suits the dark mood. It begins in Tehran, where married couple Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), who have been married for 14 years, suddenly decide to separate, even though they have an 11 year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), and Nader's father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) is living in the apartment, he's extremely frail and is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.
With their divorce application rejected, Simin moves over, and Nader hires carer Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to look after his father while he's at work. But she soon finds the job of looking after Nader's father very difficult, so she brings in her moody husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) to help.
It's a very powerful film about the difficulties one family have to face when they split, although this one is set in Iran, where customs and laws there are very different to customs in the west. Iran gets a lot of bad press for it's politics, but it's cinema is quite beautiful, and it should be given more of a look in on the basis of this.
This review of A Separation (2011) was written by Stuart K on 06 Feb 2015.
A Separation has generally received very positive reviews.
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