In every divorce, everywhere in the world, each side is convinced of its righteousness. And in A Separation as we watch a middle-class couple crack up, our allegiances shift on the winds of each scene as a gut-wrenching tension builds. The couple seem smart, charming, comely, and their 11-year-old daughter is clearly much loved, yet here they are before the camera, which sits in judgment upon them.
This intelligent, subtle film is set in Tehran and chronicles the disturbing events at the end of the relationship between Nader, a bank worker, and Simin his teacher wife. Simin — the radiant and convincing Leila Hatami — is a modern, ambitious woman who wants her daughter to grow up in freedom and has secured the family a visa to leave Iran. Nader, played with agonised tenderness by Peyman Moaadi, is trapped both by his culture and the fact that he cannot leave his father who has Alzheimer’s.
When Simin goes to stay with her parents, Nader is left to look after his father and daughter, and hires Razieh, a poor, very religious woman, to care for them. But Razieh has an accident, Nader is blamed, and soon the two families — middle-class and secular versus working-class and religious — clash, and a sinister pall falls over the household.
The dialogue has real honesty and naturalism, and was written by the director Asghar Farhadi. His own daughter Sarina plays Termeh, the schoolgirl, and eventually the entire film comes to hang on this child, her intelligence and testimony. Farhadi won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for the film, and his cast won the Silver Bear acting award. The movie has been a box-office smash in Iran, with its moral conundrums fuelling debate.
The camera peers through doors and windows, or sits disapprovingly behind the desks of officialdom, thanks to the work of the renowned cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari, who frames the film so tightly that you can feel the stress. Beyond the walls, the weight of a repressive state and religion hangs over all proceedings. A Separation leaves you poised on an emotional knife edge. Asghar Farhadi, PG, 122 mins