28/01/12….A Separation at Thame Cinema 4 All – TONIGHT !

A Separation – Iran 2011, 122 minutes, PG certificate, Directed by Asghar Farhadi, Starring Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Sareh Bayat; FARHADI’S complex and compelling story of a marital breakdown was one of the most universally praised films of the last 12 months.

It opens with the two protagonists ? Simin and Nader ? petitioning a magistrate for permission to undertake divorce proceedings in present day Tehran. But the magistrate is unseen and the couple appear to address the audience. We are thus invited to observe and arbitrate on the tensions and complexities inherent in the relationship breakdown, and its wider reverberations for innocent people close to the couple.

Simin wants to move out of Iran to another country offering greater freedom to women in order to enhance the prospects of their 11 year old daughter Termeh. Nader insists that their responsibility to his ageing and dependent father prohibits such a move. But what begins with this apparently isolated dispute escalates with a series of terrible and unforeseen consequences, in which flawed people behave badly with impossible consequences for others.

The events appear to take place in real time, but the structure of carefully concealing and revealing key events makes for an ethically teasing drama that captures the infinite shades of moral grey and the absence of clear rights or wrongs. The film joins a canon of global cinematic dramas examining marriage and its compromises that affect all cultures. But it is most particularly a powerful examination of class and, especially, gender politics in contemporary Iran ? the schisms between tradition, faith, law, aspiration and perceived entitlement.

A superb and satisfying contemporary tragedy and a journey into the emotional heart of a conflicted country ? this film is one that will stay with you.