Asghar Farhadi honored for awe-inspiring melodrama

CANNES: Iranian Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi drew enthusiastic applause yesterday for one of the most keenly awaited films at Cannes, with a Paris-set tale about love and its agonies.
“The Past” picks up many of the wrenching family themes and the taut drama of the Tehran-based “A Separation,” which saw Farhadi scoop the Academy Award for best foreign-language feature last year.
Lead actress Berenice Bejo dials down the glamor of her role in another Oscar winner, “The Artist,” to play Marie, a mother in Paris’ multicultural suburbs who asks estranged husband Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) to return from Iran to finalize their divorce.
Farhadi hints that an inability to practice his profession in France drove him into a depression that he only escaped by leaving Marie.
Marie’s teenage daughter and a North African immigrant working illegally at Samir’s dry-cleaning shop become catalysts in explosive events that force each character to reckon with the past.
Critics warmly welcomed the picture and took to Twitter to declare it a favorite when jury president Steven Spielberg hands out the awards on May 26.
Bejo in particular was singled out for a gripping performance as an ambivalent mother and partner.
Farhadi said his decision to set his film in France this time was for the sake of the story, not because of any crackdown on artists at home.
“I can work for years outside Iran but I do remain a very Iranian director. Of course, the set may change but I don’t change,” he told reporters, speaking through an interpreter.
He referred to Nobel-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, asking: “If he goes into a different country to write, is it fair to say the work is no longer Colombian?
“I don’t think so. The nationality of the film is perhaps the link that each viewer forms with it.”