Une séparation

If mainstream cinema leaves you soulless, see this film.

If you have a modicum of intelligence, see this film.

If you like great acting and directing, see this film.

If you like great writing and editing, see this film.

If you have an interest in law, see this film.

If you are a parent, see this film.

A Separation is not harrowing or depressing. Fear not as I did before. If you don't like subtitles, you will forget they are there. Do not read any more detailed reviews. Go without preconception. A Separation deserves all the plaudits it is getting and deserves a much wider audience. Minimalistic and economic, a Separation is one of the finest, most chiselled pieces of cinema of this millennium.

It seems that a court room drama could be the best place for Frahadi to recreate his very own world and confront us with a short and somehow faraway situations and incidents in life. We think these kinds of happenings and conflicts would not take place in our lives but with his realistic world and characters they seem so close and possible to anyone. Asghar Farhadi loves to put his audience in place of judge, as his other pictures like About Eli or Fireworks Wednesday and here with no fear he takes us straight to a court room. But the thing is that the judge does not provide any help for us to make a clear judgment and surprisingly makes the situation even more complicated. Yes Farhadi doesn't want us to make a judgment, He makes us watch and observe and leave the theater with a big fork in front of us.It Seems that any single decision creates another world full of forks and not taken ways.

when nobody is clearly guilty and the line between black and white is so dim. And again here we are in Frhadi's powerful hands surprised to the end of the movie. You can't leave your chair even for one second because the story never lets you to lose even a single moment. And like a tennis ball we're always being shot from this side to the other. And finally we are the daughter shocked and disable to make a decision. May be we haven't seen or we don't want to see this side of life, where nothing is clear, when small lies and unimportant undone things and unsaid words gang up against us and turn to a big disaster. Frahadi has found his own world and his own language and his own version of life. Something we'd never seen before. We appreciate that. He can easily bombard us with information and surprise us with tiny details that seem nothing but like a snowball rolling down a slope they can form a big drama.

Caught "A Separation" in Amsterdam last night, fully unprepared for its greatness. I hadn't been swept off my feet for a while, but this Iranian Hitchcockian drama sucked us in for 123 minutes and left us very, very impressed.

I'm mainly writing this review to assure every non-Iranian IMDb-reader that you absolutely SHOULD see "A Separation". I will be shocked if this movie doesn't win an Academy Award. The acting is great, and the script is probably the best I've seen in five years. The genius of Asghar Farhadi's story is that it piles on the tension and drama without resorting to fireworks, trickery or shock and awe plot effects. It also manages to perfectly balance the plights of several protagonists. Very few screenwriters have this capacity.

If this movie reminds me of anything, it is "Ladri di Biciclette" (Bicycle Thieves), which has a similar seemingly "simple" story setup. But then "A Separation" is much more developed, much more complex, much richer. Go see it.

This is the first Iranian film I've seen, and I'm recommending it to every-one I know. It is so well-crafted; the twists of the plot throw up new moral dilemmas for all the protagonists, which are explored sensitively and without judgement - so refreshingly unlike mainstream American films. I felt sympathy for all the characters, even the threatening Hodjat, full of misplaced rage which often erupts volcanically. And as a footnote, the film felt like an intimate view into a society that our news media portray as monochromatic and extremely foreign. (I am writing this a few days after the UK embassy in Tehran was ransacked)

I'll just get to the point,

if you are previewing for something to watch, there is no way you can play the 1st 3 minutes of this film and stop. It hooks you straight in, and for me, I LOVE that in films.

the story is just AMAZING, and the way it's portrayed, the director makes sure you are following behind with EVERY MINUTE OF THE FILM, as it unwinds. the casting is just brilliant, as if they were just born to play this film and then die. they achieve in captivating the emotion of the story VERY well. EVERY SINGLE ACTOR int this film did a great job.

what's even more amazing, it's how low budget this film is (300K us$).

as a conclusion; 3 good things about this film; (1) the story-line, well written and well scripted (2) the cast, well selected, and amazing acting (3) the setting, and the lack of a score! (yes, & it was a great idea!)