The Mermaid (Mei ren yu)

THE MERMAID (MEI REN YU) (Stephen Chow, 2016)

Like the mythical half-human, half-fish, THE MERMAID (MEI REN YU) combines two dissimilar species to create something rarely seen. Director Stephen Chow, known best in the United States for SHAOLIN SOCCER and KUNG FU HUSTLE, takes his brand of broad comedy and merges it with social concerns regarding the environment and conspicuous consumption. The transitions between message boosting and silliness can make for some jarring shifts. Opening shots of devastation to land, water, and animals are followed by an over-the-top scene of a fraudulent museum of exotic animals being run out of the owner’s apartment. The result is like alternating graphic portions of the documentary THE COVE with goofy gags. While the beginning and the climactic fight between men and mermaids take some disorienting sharp turns, Chow keeps this unusual amalgamation of moral imperatives and comedic hijinks from becoming heavy-handed.

When playboy businessman Liu Xuan (Deng Chao) purchases nature and wildlife reserve Green Gulf, it does not seem like a sound investment, but he is using sonar transmitters in the surrounding waters to drive away the dolphins and other marine life, thus enabling reclamation that will yield huge profits. In THE MERMAID some of the creatures in the sea, now forced to reside in a rusting freighter, are determined to fight back. The half-human, half-fish population assigns Shan (Jelly Lin) to seduce their nemesis so that she or the others can get close enough to kill him.

Shan’s sweet disposition makes her an unlikely temptress and assassin. As she and Liu Xuan begin to fall in love, it becomes more difficult for her to carry out the order to end his life. Liu Xuan’s business partner Li Ruo-lan (Zhang Yu Qi) has romantic interest in him, so she doesn’t like that Shan appears to have captured his heart and might be changing his mind about development plans for Green Gulf. Although Liu Xuan is gradually becoming aware of the detrimental impact of his actions, half-man, half-cephalopod named Octopus (Show Lo) still desires to eliminate the person responsible for all of his kind’s suffering.

Chow brings a cartoon’s sensibility to much of THE MERMAID’s humor. Shan’s initial attempt to assassinate Liu Xuan with sea urchins or stab him with a crudely made dagger is beautifully choreographed as her actions are thwarted through unseen obstacles and unexpected movements. A riotous scene with Liu Xuan trying to convince the police that he was abducted by a mermaid feels like something out of Looney Tunes with Bugs Bunny as a sketch artist teasing the victim. THE MERMAID gets a lot of laughs out of all the wrong ways to draw something half-human and half-fish.

As a live-action film with assists from iffy visual effects, the film’s comedy sometimes plays as being more sadistic than it might in an animated movie. A romantic spin on an amusement park ride results in Shan and Liu Xuan barfing even as they’re enjoying the time together. Octopus disguises himself as the lovers’ chef so he can kill Liu Xuan but ends up having several of his tentacles seared, chopped off, and ground because the other cooks mistake them for the meal’s ingredients. The pained reactions to the trauma that Octopus tries to hide are very funny even as the comedic violence is made more concrete than is ordinary. Chow demonstrates playfulness as he pushes the humor slightly beyond the limits of what an audience might anticipate. THE MERMAID’s boldness and mix of tones can make for some awkwardness, but the anything goes attitude is responsible for the heights it reaches.

Grade: B

About Elly (Darbareye Elly)

ABOUT ELLY (DARBAREYE ELLY) (Asghar Farhadi, 2009)

A weekend at a seaside villa turns tense when one member of a group disappears in ABOUT ELLY. Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) arranges for three couples, their kids, an unmarried friend, and her daughter’s teacher to get away from Tehran for some relaxation. Her ulterior motivation for the trip is to introduce Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), who lives in Germany and divorced his wife, to shy teacher Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti). Although Elly appears to be having a good time, she insists that she can only stay one night. She may want to get back to her mother, who is recovering from a recent heart attack, or she may be uncomfortable with the jokes and subtle pressure to pair off with Ahmad.

When everyone realizes that Elly has vanished, the question is whether she walked to town to catch a bus or drowned trying to save one of the kids who had been playing by the shore and was pulled away by the turbulent sea. They have reason to believe that either outcome is possible, but with no body found and no way of contacting her, the answer remains elusive. As the friends scramble to determine how they should proceed in the situation, they act rashly and assign blame to one another.

The final shot of ABOUT ELLY features a car spinning its wheels as the friends try to push it out of a rut in the beach. The image rhymes with their actions throughout the film. The more effort they put into expedient resolutions of the problems they confront, the deeper they get stuck in them. Writer-director Asghar Farhadi creates the quagmire out of small lies and deceptions. This excursion is rooted in deceit. The individual untruths and misleadings may not seem problematic at the time they are uttered, but the accumulation of them forms a quicksand that tugs them further into the morass.

Farhadi’s intricate yet efficient screenplay showcases his watchmaker-like ability for setting a story in motion and having the moving pieces operate in accordance beautifully. ABOUT ELLY monitors eight adults plus kids and the dynamics among them. As it would be for Elly, a stranger among intimates, there’s a lot for the viewer to process in the introduction to these characters. Farhadi’s observational style doesn’t waste a shot in providing all of the information needed to understand the complex interactions.

The remarkable screenplay makes ABOUT ELLY seem like it could translate well to the stage, yet it boasts strengths particular to filmmaking. The roar of the sea reminds of the trouble that awaits but blends into the background until it must be dealt with. Editor Hayedeh Safiyari’s cuts from scene to scene aren’t confusing but raise some uncertainty of how the action advances from one point to the next. The technique reflects the disorientation the group feels upon realizing the mess they’ve ended up in. In a subtle but dazzling transition, the opening shot inside a charity box as money is dropped through the slot becomes light in a tunnel. Both images suggest the danger of not understanding what one thinks is seen with a limited perspective.

ABOUT ELLY debuted in 2009 but remained unreleased in the United States because of rights issues. Like Farhadi’s great subsequent film, A SEPARATION, this thriller thrives on how scenarios unravel as individuals take measures to protect their self-interests.

Grade: A

Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure)

VENUS IN FUR (Roman Polanski, 2013)

It is a dark and stormy night in VENUS IN FUR when Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) arrives at the theater to audition for Thomas (Mathieu Amalric). After a long day of seeing actresses, none of whom have the maturity he thinks the role demands, Thomas is not inclined to let a latecomer who’s not even on the call list take up his time. Nevertheless Vanda insists until he finally agrees to allow her to read for the part. Although he intends to stop her audition after three pages, she demonstrates a grasp of the character that tantalizes him to keep the tryout going.

Like the David Ives play on which the film is based, Thomas has adapted Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s VENUS IN FURS for his production. The term masochism is derived from the Austrian writer and his novel about finding pleasure through degradation. While a clear demarcation exists when Vanda and Thomas are playing the characters and speaking about themselves, the dynamic between them takes on the qualities of the material they’re acting. As the writer and director Thomas is seemingly in charge but finds himself agreeing to being dominated by the unpredictable actress.

The play within the film toys with the questions of if a work reflects an artist’s desires, particularly those that are sublimated, or if everything can simply be ascribed to creative license. Thomas defends dubious ideas and representations in his writing as faithfulness to the source material, but are those qualities what attracted him to it in the first place? Director Roman Polanski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ives, complicates matters further by casting and costuming Thomas with a striking resemblance to himself and having his wife play Vanda. In addition the debate about power dynamics between men and women and the strong and the submissive extends through Polanski’s body of work and colors perceptions of his past legal problems. Thus VENUS IN FUR transforms from a theoretical argument about how much of an artist is in his art to an intimate and self-critical examination. Thomas strives to make the text ambiguous, but in the end veiling his fantasies and frustrations through fiction serves as an acceptable way of hiding them in broad daylight. Interpretation is left to the individual.

VENUS IN FUR opens with a Steadicam shot entering the theater as though Vanda is a succubus barging into Thomas’s snug retreat to torment and delight him. There’s nothing supernatural in how she controls the mood and the lighting, yet her domination of the scenario is handled as though she possesses such abilities to affect mental and physical states according to her will. The film perches on the knife’s edge separating foreboding and the erotic through verbal intercourse. Vanda and Thomas do not touch often, yet it’s unnecessary as VENUS IN FUR conveys a tactile and fetishistic relationship with words and objects.

Seigner has great fun in her versatile performance, appearing first as a brash, gum-smacking dimwit who morphs into a perceptive interpreter capable of being a compliant underling and terrifying challenger. Vanda tells Thomas that as the director it’s his job to torture actors, yet the creative combustion comes as their relationship becomes one rooted in mutable and mutual rule. Either’s submission means nothing without consent.

Grade: B

I Wish (Kiseki)

I WISH (KISEKI) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2011)

Like many kids whose parents have separated, brothers Koichi (Koki Maeda) and Ryunosuke (Ohshirô Maeda) would like to reunite their family.  Twelve-year-old Koichi, the older and more serious of the siblings, believes he’s found the solution in I WISH (KISEKI).  He overhears classmates saying that whoever sees two high-speed trains pass each other for the first time will get their wishes granted.  New bullet trains are scheduled to begin service across the island of Kyushu in two months, so the boys work on plans to meet halfway in Kumamoto prefecture to get their dreams fulfilled.

Koichi, who lives with their mother Nozomi (Nene Ohtsuka) and her parents in the island’s southern prefecture Kagoshima, is pushed into action by hearing his mom being encouraged to move on.  She’s already taken a job as a cashier at a grocery store.  A boyfriend could soon follow.  Knowing the importance of the mission, Koichi prepares with an explorer’s thoroughness.  He and his friends examine maps to determine where the trains are most likely to pass, calculate a budget for the trip, and scrape together the money by looking for spare coins and selling some toys.

Ryunosuke doesn’t seem to mind the new arrangement as much as Koichi.  Certainly he would like for everyone to be together again, but he doesn’t worry about whether or not their parents will reconcile.  Since choosing to stay with their musician father Kenji (Joe Odagiri) in the island’s northern prefecture Fukuoka, he’s taken to tending a garden and surrounded himself with many friends.  For Ryunosuke the trip seems more like a chance to see his brother for the first time in six months and a fun day away from home with his pals.

As noisy as two trains passing each other at 160 miles per hour is, the disruption to the surrounding environment is fleeting.  The same can’t be said for the effects on children of divorce or a parent’s gambling problem, but in I WISH such disturbances don’t necessarily need to be ruinous either.  Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda studies the resiliency of children in the face of life transformations large and small.  He tracks these adaptations with plenty of charm and wit, making this observational look at the kids closer to Francois Truffaut’s SMALL CHANGE than his own harrowing NOBODY KNOWS.

The great pleasure of I WISH is Kore-eda capturing kids being kids instead of the little adults many films mistake children for.  Sometimes they can be very funny, like when they talk about crushes on teachers and what they would wish for if they could be guaranteed to have one dream made real .  At other points watching them can be heartbreaking.  For instance, Koichi is more tuned into his mother’s fragile emotional state than anyone else realizes.  I WISH excels at evoking a child-like state of mind in all of its wonders and concerns because of Kore-eda’s astuteness in following how kids make sense of the world and change their perspectives.

I WISH retains Kore-eda’s gift for empathetic scrutiny of daily life and ordinary people while also delivering miracles of a kind.  Hurl prayers for momentous change if one will, but don’t forget that answers and greatest blessings can come in the form of chance encounters and common pleasures.  I WISH feels slighter than Kore-eda’s best work, such as AFTER LIFE and STILL WALKING, but it’s a warm effort that finds through the tough times the kids can be, and often are, all right.

Grade: B+

A Cat in Paris (Un vie de chat)

A CAT IN PARIS (UN VIE DE CHAT) (Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, 2010)

By day black cat Dino is the best friend of Zoe, a small child who has lost her voice since the murder of her father.  The companionship Dino provides is ever so important with Zoe’s police superintendent mother Jeanne wrapped up in the hunt for her husband’s killer, Victor Costa.  With the art treasure The Colossus of Nairobi scheduled to be moved, Jeanne expects the gangster to be flushed out.

By night Dino is the accomplice of cat burglar Nico.  No one is the wiser to the cat’s double life in A CAT IN PARIS (UN VIE DE CHAT) until one evening when Zoe slips out her bedroom window to follow him.  During this nighttime adventure she stumbles upon Costa and his hapless underlings.  Nico and Dino come to Zoe’s rescue, but her safety is temporary.  The police, now wise to the burglar’s activities because of the telltale paw prints at the crime scenes, take him away and unwittingly place the girl in the care of one of Costa’s associates.

In two of the last three years Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members have thrown a few curveballs in the Best Animated Feature category by nominating small, largely unknown films alongside the products from industry heavyweights.  A CAT IN PARIS was one of two foreign-language animated features nominated for the 84th Academy Awards.  While the fluid hand-drawn animation provides a pleasant stylistic alternative to the predominance of 3D computer animation in the marketplace, the story leaves a lot to be desired.

Deceased or absent parents are not new to children’s stories, but the casualness with which the information of Zoe’s murdered father is introduced comes across somewhat distressingly.  His death haunts Jeanne, per her nightmarish visions, and has turned Zoe mute.  A CAT IN PARIS doesn’t dwell on these details, but for such a slight film in narrative terms, it carries excessive psychological weight.

A CAT IN PARIS gets bogged down in the middle section with the bumblings and strained jokes of Costa and his goons.  Even at a lean 70 minutes, the film feels padded out and unfocused.  When the low-key vibe works, it’s during Nico’s jazz-accompanied rooftop wanderings and thefts, in part because these scenes bring grace and humor mostly lacking in the other parts.

The titular cat is granted the full range of reactions and is good for some laughs, especially when he goes on the offensive in face-hugger mode.  Meanwhile, the human characters are given simplistic personalities that aren’t helped by the energy-deficient vocal performances.  (The English-language dub of the film adds celebrity voices [Marcia Gay Harden, Anjelica Huston, Matthew Modine] with little to no benefit.)  The thin characterization is especially problematic with Nico and how his storyline develops.  Although he hints at motivations beyond mere self-enriching thievery, A CAT IN PARIS never follows up on the matter and leaves big questions with how his arc resolves.

By the end A CAT IN PARIS feels like a film split in its priorities and satisfactorily achieving none of them.  It misses as quality children’s entertainment through a self-serious, downbeat story without an engaging main character. Nods to film noir detective stories aside, the flimsy story doesn’t give adults much to latch onto either.

Grade: C

Miss Bala

MISS BALA (Gerardo Naranjo, 2011)

Through no fault of her own Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman) gets mixed up in the Mexican drug war in MISS BALA.  The young woman from the outskirts of Tijuana is in the city to sign up for the Miss Baja California pageant.  Later that night she and her friend Suzu (Lakshmi Picazo) are at a club when members of a criminal organization slip in and shoot up the place.

Laura escapes but loses track of Suzu in the melee.  While looking for her the next day, Laura again crosses paths with the drug gang known as La Estrella and its fearsome leader Lino Valdez (Noe Fernandez).  Rather than kill her, Lino forces Laura to participate in their illegal activities.

Statistics shown before the end credits claim more than 36,000 lives have been lost in Mexico during the drug war from 2006 to 2011 and that drug trafficking generates $25 billion annually there.  Director and co-writer Gerardo Naranjo’s film bristles with anger at the toll this situation is having upon the country and its ordinary citizens, and MISS BALA manifests the fury in its blunt dramatization of real life.  This impassioned political work aims to persuade through on-the-ground reporting about the rampant corruption and straw men in the war on drugs rather than with sloganeering.

The depicted events could easily be the basis for a slick Hollywood action film.  Instead Naranjo numbs sensation to make his points about the drug war’s damage to Mexico, turning MISS BALA into a thriller from the dissociative first person perspective.  Laura endures as though she’s having an out of body experience in a waking nightmare.  The mildly disorienting sound design emphasizes that everything she sees, does, and has done to her seems unreal and yet her experiences are horrifyingly all too real.  

Naranjo’s use of negative space in constructing the chaotic border town is MISS BALA’s greatest achievement.  Visually the unsettledness of a Tijuana ruled by criminals is conveyed with key information glimpsed in reflections, suggested beyond Laura’s view, and dropped into exceptionally composed long, unbroken shots.  The back of Laura’s head often faces the camera, yet even with a wide frame the world feels like it’s closing in on her.

Laura’s motivations aren’t always readable in Sigman’s performance, but the protagonist’s opinions are less essential than the one quality the actress ferociously exhibits.  Sigman invests Laura with a survival instinct that supersedes whatever objections she might possess as an unwilling participant in the gang’s dealings.  MISS BALA is loosely based on beauty pageant winner Laura Zúñiga, who was linked to a drug cartel and arrested and detained along with other members in 2008.  Just like beauty queens represent their countries, the film’s version of Laura stands in for the Mexican population.  Sigman is no mere symbol of those put-upon bystanders, though, but a specific reminder of the suffering innocents. 

MISS BALA delivers many aesthetic thrills, including the club ambush and a shootout under an overpass, but Naranjo is using the form to call attention to the harsh truth that the battles on view do not only exist in a movie.  It also proves to be a riveting way of telling the story and transmitting the message most effectively. 

Grade: B

The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo)

THE KID WITH A BIKE (LE GAMIN AU VÉLO) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 2011)

Eleven-year-old Cyril Catoul (Thomas Doret) wants two things: to be with his father and to get his bicycle.  In THE KID WITH A BIKE he’s better off investing his emotional attachment with the vehicle.

Cyril’s father Guy (Jérémie Renier) has entrusted him to a children’s home and leaves the boy believing that this will only be a temporary arrangement.  Despite all evidence--lack of contact, a disconnected phone number--Cyril refuses to accept that his dad has abandoned him.  

One day he escapes the institution to go to the apartment they once shared so he can be reunited with his parent.  The landlord insists no one occupies that unit any longer, but Cyril must see for himself.  Shortly after getting inside the building he is confronted by counselors who want to take him back to the home.  

Cyril eludes them and slips into the medical office downstairs.  The officials easily find him, but rather than going quietly and willingly, he causes a scene and tightly grasps Samantha (Cécile de France), a stranger in the waiting room.  Only after he is told that he can see the apartment does Cyril calm down.  When he enters it, there is no father waiting to embrace him.  The empty living space has been cleared of all possessions, including his bike.

The incident touches Samantha.  She buys back Cyril’s bike, which his father sold, and returns it to the boy.  At Cyril’s asking she also agrees to be his foster parent on weekends.  Samantha even arranges a meeting between Cyril and Guy.  When it is apparent that he will continue to give Cyril false hope of being together again, she forces the delinquent dad to be honest about the future and dedicates herself to the wounded child.

Writer-directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne possess an extraordinary talent for turning social issue dramas into tense and empathetic thrillers centered on The Golden Rule.  Their films are implicitly religious studies of the moral choices confronting us as individuals and societies, yet they are anything but tedious sermons overflowing with platitudes and simple answers, the likes of which often mark what passes for explicitly Christian cinema.  Instead the Dardennes make gritty modern parables calling for compassion and sacrifice when such support is not easily given by those providing assistance or earned, if it is merited at all, by the recipients.  Like contemporary Jonahs, the Dardennes’ characters are regularly called to do precisely what they would prefer to avoid.  That human struggle gives their films the urgency and heart missing in cozier dramas where paying it forward is as painless as dropping spare change in the Salvation Army’s red kettles.

For Samantha in THE KID WITH A BIKE, the test is what to do about a boy who desperately needs someone to love and care for him.  For little more than a moment Cyril enters her life at random, yet something compels her to reach out to him.  Her motivation is never explained.  Perhaps she couldn’t if she tried.  What matters is that she helps him, not why.  They are brought together at a critical time in his development, and her kindness and generosity, while often rejected, offer the protection Cyril won’t get elsewhere.

Samantha, a single hairdresser who may have taken on more than she anticipated, lives out 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7.  In a marvelous performance rooted in action instead of backstory, de France demonstrates the purity of love and delicately expresses the joy and pain experienced in giving it unconditionally.  Samantha is not transparent, yet de France grounds the character so that her doings seem natural and true to form.

Doret, making an exceptional film debut, is a bundle of restlessness and anger.  His small stature makes plain the unguarded exposure to his father’s harshness and disguises the coiled energy with which Cyril will strike when provoked.  Doret does well projecting and exhibiting toughness beyond his years, but he’s most affecting when revealed as a confused and hurt child. 

The Dardennes’ style resists cheap sentimentality, yet in THE KID WITH A BIKE it yields a deeply moving examination of love as a shield.  They put forth no guarantee that everything will work out.  The vulnerability in no expectations or certainties materializes in a harrowing portrait of an at-risk child and the woman who could be his salvation.  In the Dardennes’ films the grace issued by ordinary people supplants miracles but is no less of a wonder.

Grade: A-

Trollhunter (Trolljegeren)

TROLLHUNTER (TROLLJEGEREN) (André Øvredal, 2010)

A trio of Norwegian college filmmakers follow a secretive man they believe is poaching bears and set out to expose his illegal activities.  Fashioning themselves documentarians working in the tradition of Michael Moore, they keep up their pursuit of him despite having interview requests rebuffed multiple times.  When Hans (Otto Jespersen) finally consents to reveal what keeps him busy all hours of the night, his answer is not one they anticipated.  Hans claims to hunt trolls.

The students--interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), sound engineer Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen)--are greatly amused by such an outrageous assertion, but after accompanying Hans on a search and being chased by a giant, lumbering, three-headed creature, they are duly convinced that trolls exist.  Possessing the first video evidence of trolls is bound to reward them with fame and fortune, and they continue to travel with Hans to collect more proof that the mythical beings are real.

TROLLHUNTER (TROLLJEGEREN) adopts the form of a found footage documentary, which translates as lots of banal conversations, abundant shots of the Scandinavian countryside, and competent but shaky handheld camerawork.  The format is inherently forgiving toward these shortcomings, if not outright encouraging of them.  While the style grants TROLLHUNTER the opportunity to take the cheap way out in showing (or not showing) the trolls, the special effects crew aims high and impresses with the design and realism in the gnarled creatures.

As robust as the FX work is, the meat of the film is narratively undernourished. There’s plenty of driving on highways and trudging through woods but little in terms of story or character, at least as far as the college students are concerned.  They need to be more engaging even if their actions aren’t.

Conversely, Jespersen amuses with the workmanlike approach he invests in his weary lone ranger patrolling the territories.  Hans’ matter-of-fact style, as if he’s placing cheese in mousetraps and swatting flies rather than baiting and blasting towering beasts, brings droll humor to the rather absurd situations he encounters. TROLLHUNTER can’t quite decide if it is playing the run-ins with trolls for laughs or scares.  Jespersen’s dry wit suggests that director André Øvredal should have favored the former.

Grade: C+

A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin)

A SEPARATION (JODAEIYE NADER AZ SIMIN) (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

In A SEPARATION Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) have reached a major disagreement in their fourteen-year marriage.  They and their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) have received their visas, but the window to use them will soon be closing.  Simin wishes to leave Iran for the United States because she wants a better life for her daughter than what she believes awaits her in their home country.  Nader refuses to go because he must take care of his Alzheimer’s stricken father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi).

Feeling as though she has no alternative, Simin files for a divorce.  She freely admits that her husband does not treat her poorly.  Nader does not wish to end their relationship.  Informed of these facts, the judge sees no just cause for granting the divorce.  Simin expresses her displeasure by moving into her parents’ home.

With his wife gone, Nader needs someone to attend to his father while he works.  He hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a poor woman who must make a long commute to Tehran to earn her pay.  The requirements of the job present challenges that may exceed what she can handle, but Razieh needs the money, especially with her hotheaded husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) in debt to creditors.

The situation takes a turn for the worse when Nader makes two discoveries not to his liking and fires her on the spot.  The outcome of their argument leads to legal charges that could bring serious trouble to both families.

Writer-director Asghar Farhadi performs some kind of miracle with the tension and complexity he produces from such a simple set-up.  Even more impressively, he does it by observing all sides fairly and having them present the truth as they know it.  Here are two couples attempting to make the best of their undesirable circumstances at home and in the judicial system, yet the more they try to wiggle their ways out of their problems, the more serious the consequences become.

Certainly plenty is at stake in the legal dispute, but as information is revealed in testimony, the repercussions for each side threaten to greatly exceed what any of them could have anticipated.  Even striving to make things right after a difficult investigation can have negative, unforeseeable results.  Relationships are also at risk. Nader and Simin were happily married, and their choices can be justified.  What is the correct decision when improving a child’s prospects means abandoning an ill parent or reliant relative?

The stress of picking between impossible options creates the cracks.  Endeavoring to heal them increases the fractures.  Being right within a marriage and the court is important to all parties, but the cost can be steep, especially when arriving at the superior judgment is practically unachievable.

Farhadi’s exceptional screenplay for A SEPARATION is a model of dramatic structure.  The makers of Hollywood thrillers wish they could turn out films this nerve-racking, let alone ones that achieve such narrative pressure through ordinary conversations that spouses and legal combatants might engage in.

The uniformly excellent cast pulls audience loyalties with great skill.  Moadi gains sympathy as the wounded spouse and suffering child, but he also plays Nader with stubbornness and anger that can make him difficult to support at times.  Hatami stands firm as a protective mother whose singular mindset can exacerbate matters.  Bayat attracts compassion and aggravates through her effort to act properly according to rigid expectations.

A SEPARATION isn’t strictly about divorce or other marital parting of ways, but a crucial portion consists of providing perspective on how spousal divisions and disagreements affect children.  Termeh and Razieh’s young daughter are mostly silent witnesses to the domestic and legal battles around them.  In a film teeming with emotional potency, the most devastating moments come in the acknowledgment that regardless of what the adults sort out, these girls are bystanders who absorb significant injuries of their own.

Grade: A


(Note:  A SEPARATION was not seen in time for consideration among my picks for the best films of 2011.  If it had, it would have ranked third on my Top 10 list.)