Past, The

Synopsis: Having deserted his French wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo), and her two children from a previous relationship, an Iranian man, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to Paris after a four year absence to finalize their divorce, only to find that she has a new, younger partner Samir (Tahar Rahim).

Having won an Oscar for his previous film, the deservedly-acclaimed A Separation, Asghar Farhadi returns with another close quarters depiction of the trials of love and marriage. It is a strong film, commendably probing the tangled web of long-term relationships, although, particularly in comparison to its predecessor, as a drama it feels a little contrived and over-long.

Farhadi’s script is complex and detailed as it unpacks the criss-crossing relationships of which Marie is the epicentre. Not only is there the tense triangle of the three adults, but Marie’s teen daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), and Samir’s young son, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), are also making serious emotional demands on their respective parents and future step-parents. Hanging over all this is the shadow of Samir’s current wife who lies in a coma, her fate unknown.

What we see over the few days of Ahmad's visit is in essence the conflict between the raw and the cooked in civilized society, between our immediate, often self-damaging emotional urgings and the way in which society mediates them. Much is made of the act of apologizing both as a constructive way of moving beyond our mistakes but also as a too-convenient get-out for various failings. In a fairly long, and for me somewhat excessive, final section involving the history of Samir’s wife, Farhadi also exposes the way that our actions are often based on selfishness and consequent miscalculations, sometimes leading to irrevocable destructive decisions.

Although Bejo, in a role originally intended for Marion Cotillard, has been singled out for her performance and she does have one brief scene when she loses it with virago-ish vigour and that is unusual for attractive females in film, compared to Leila Hatami in A Separation I found her a little too distractingly photogenic to suit this tale of ordinary madness. On the other hand Ali Mosaffa is well-cast as the detached former husband and Elyes Aguis a captivating presence as Samir’s wilful young son.

One assumes, given the title, that at heart the director is concerned with how our past actions determine where we are at the present moment, for better or, more likely it seems, for worse, and how they in turn point us towards our future. Farhadi ends the film on, if not a hopeful, then certainly, a human note: caring for each other is a good place to start that long journey, one that begins again every day.

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