A Separation
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 3.5
Intelligently written drama starts off simply enough - a wife (Leila Hatami) wants to leave her husband (Peyman Moaadi) and go to America - that grows to become this ridiculously tense exploration of the nature of deceit. The wife's act of leaving sets off a bizarre chain of events that ends up with accusations of murder and various attempts to cover up the truth: the adults are all massive fibbers caught up in a series of incidents and issues, while the children get caught up in the drama, unaware of the politics of the tales their parents tell and just trying to seek the truth. Marvelously acted and thought-out - it reveals how lies have a way of compounding themselves, and how defiantly people defend those lies by making up more lies, which leads to more anguish. In the end, truth has its own perverse way of rising to the surface and the harsh reality affects the (naive, good-natured) kids the most.
