Did I enjoy this super-slow foreign language movie from the slightly overpraised Iranian director of A Separation? No. Do I think you will? Also no. This is one of those films that’s critically heralded because of its real flaws: it’s slow, it’s almost ludicrously somber and self-serious, every member of the main cast looks like they should be on suicide watch, and the low-stakes (but convoluted) plot can be called “beautifully mundane” until you realize that you’ve essentially just watched a movie where the biggest mystery is about why a side character’s wife tried to commit suicide…even though we’ve never met her and don’t really care.
What Works: An Iranian man comes back to Paris to legally divorce his long-estranged French wife (Berenice Bejo). They have no kids together, but he’s quite attached to her two daughters from a previous marriage. He’s not thrilled with the fact that she’s currently living with a different (and younger) guy who’s got a young son as well. There are a couple of more relevant details to know, but this is the kind of film that thinks any mundane bit of information about a character is worth spending five scenes on, and keeps going back over the same detail from different perspectives. A lot of critics are enthralled by this approach, and some (incorrectly) call it Hitchcockian. I will say that Bejo looks worse than we’ve ever seen her, but also (somehow) better…like a depressed, feral cat that’s inexplicably luminous. And I did actually care about her relationship with the new boyfriend, and hoped they could find a way out of the moroseness of the movie to be at least somewhat happy.
What Doesn’t Work: Well, in case you can’t tell from the two paragraphs above, I’m not really crazy about this movie. One problem I haven’t mentioned yet—-and being slow, boring, hinging on an uninvolving mystery with an irrelevant answer, and populated with joyless characters who have no spark is kind-of a big deal—-is that the lead character (the estranged ex who comes back to town for a divorce) isn’t really important for the film. He feels more like a side character who keeps getting pushed into the forefront, and it’s telling that the last act of the movie barely features him. He’s also (unintentionally) kind-of an asshole. The movie makes it clear that he left Bejo’s character, has no paternal claim to the girls, and hasn’t seen them in a very long time (perhaps the entire 4 years they’ve been separated) but he keeps lingering around stirring stuff up anyway. It makes it clear that he doesn’t really want to be there, but then why does he become so invested in his ex’s new relationship or what her kids are up to? Would he really be happier if she left her new man and was completely alone when he flew back to Tehran?
What I Would Have Done Differently: This isn’t a movie you pay 12 dollars to see in the theater. It just isn’t. You’ll feel burned and disappointed, so don’t do it. I thought A Separation was a good movie (not quite a masterpiece) that thrived on showing us the exotic banalities of the Iranian court system. This film isn’t opening up a new world and also isn’t entirely believable since it thinks people talk in hushed declarations of deep truths every moment of their lives.