{"id":1793,"date":"2014-03-22T19:48:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T23:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/~reviewing\/?page_id=1793"},"modified":"2014-03-22T19:51:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T23:51:48","slug":"the-past-shines-but-dimly","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reviewing\/?page_id=1793","title":{"rendered":"Farhadi’s ‘The Past’ shines, but dimly"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 22, 2014<\/span><\/p>\n

By KASSANDRA MEYER<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are looking for B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Bejo\u2019s tap-dancing, whimsical performance from \u201cThe Artist\u201d (2012), you are in for an entirely different experience in \u201cThe Past\u201d (\u201cLe Pass\u00e9\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"the-past-poster\"<\/a><\/span>Bejo establishes herself as multi-dimensional actress who can play wide range of characters \u2013 from the comedic and light-hearted to the complex and emotional \u2013 in her latest film.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides these two films, the French actress was not known for anything worth mentioning. Okay, she had a small role in the box-office flop, \u201cA Knight\u2019s Tale\u201d (2001), opposite pre-Brokeback Mountain Heath Ledger. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, her performance in \u201cThe Past\u201d has garnered a Best Actress Award at Cannes last year and solidified her in the respectable French actress category, \u00e1 la Audrey Tatou.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the story, Bejo plays the soon to be ex-wife Marie of Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) an Iranian man, who arrives in France after four years to finalize his divorce procedure. \u00a0Marie has started a relationship with an Arab man named Samir (Tahar Rahim<\/span><\/a>), who has a son and whose wife is in a coma. The relationship of the older daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), and Marie is strained because Lucie disapproves of her mother’s relationship with Samir.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the plot unravels, the audience learns that Samir\u2019s wife discovered his affair with Marie, which led to her suicide attempt and subsequent coma. The plot has twists and turns, in the same vein as the director Asghar Farhadi<\/span><\/a>\u2019s 2011 film, \u201cA Separation,\u201d which won him an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.\u00a0 \u201cA Separation\u201d has a stronger plot and examines issues of gender, religion, justice and class from his home country of Iran, where Islamic law coincides uneasily with modernity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his newer film, \u201cThe Past,\u201d Farhadi<\/span><\/a> does not make social or political commentary on Iran.\u00a0 Rather, Farhadi steps away his controversial country and creates a complex domestic drama set in modern day France. The film is finely acted with a script that forces moviegoers to reassess the characters many times and elegant camerawork that constantly reveals new bits of information. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"131079_bc\"<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Past,\u201d director Farhadi uses the same style from his previous film for which he was praised.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

He crafts his own blend of neorealism, with non-linear narratives and naturalist acting being the most prominent characteristics. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is intricate and mature, but it\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>also meandering and, at times,\u00a0<\/span>heavy-handed, even melodramatic. The tight control of time, place and action that made \u2018A Separation\u2019 so gripping, is just not there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides the slow-paced plot, Farhadi has a knack for hiring talented actors. Bejo plays a controlled train wreck, but has moments of bursting emotion. Mosaffa is a well-tuned mix of patience and alarm, and Rahim gives Samir a weary sadness.<\/span><\/p>\n

But perhaps the most appealing performance comes from Burlet, a young Marion Cotillard look-alike (she even played the 10-year-old version of Cotillard in \u201cLa Vie en Rose\u201d), who gives the film its confused, troubled, innocent-evil center. This young lady will be a star.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s never entirely clear what Farhadi is trying to say with this film. Perhaps his main interest is responsibility \u2013 the taking of it, the lack of it, the search for it, the shirking of it, the claiming of it. He is at pains to stress how we are all constrained by our own perspectives on our lives: something he pushes to extremes with the film\u2019s final, terribly overwrought moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"le-pass\u00e9_p5\"<\/a>\u201cThe Past\u201d breaths just like the \u201cLa Notte\u201d \u2013 Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s second film from the 1960s trilogy; his weakest of the three. <\/span><\/p>\n

Just like \u201cThe Past,\u201d \u201cLa Notte\u201d examines modernity and its discontents with great performances, but not lauded in the same degree of the first film, \u201cL\u2019aventura\u201d or third film, \u201cL\u2019eclisse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Farhardi lacks the deep moral complexities from its predecessor \u201cThe Separation\u201d and his longevity as a great director will depend on his next film.<\/span><\/p>\n