Those who saw Asghar Farhadi’s superb A Separation will be curious about this predecessor, which won him the Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival two years ago. While not as spectacularly watchable as the Oscar-winner, it has the same intelligence, control and fine acting.
A group of married Iranian friends are on holiday on the banks of the Caspian Sea. Sepideh (the splendid Golshiteh Farahani) has invited along Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), her daughter’s nursery-school teacher. It’s a bit of a plot to introduce her to Ahmed (Shahab Hosseini from A Separation), who is on a flying visit from Germany, where he has just disentangled himself from a bad marriage.
Elly tells Sepideh she must return to Tehran, where her mother has been admitted to hospital, but Sepideh wants her to stay so hides Elly’s luggage. Then one of the children of the party is almost drowned and Elly disappears. The group are unsure whether she has also drowned or just returned home. The holiday is ruined and quarrels break out. Why did Sepideh invite Elly?
This is where the film takes on the aspect of a highly emotional thriller worked out on a level that gives each of a dozen characters the chance to betray their attitude to Sepideh’s small but tragic deception. It is the mark of a really good film-maker that he can turn the screw this tightly and place the scene so accurately within the context of a different culture that, at base, seems much the same as our own. Once again, Farhadi has told an ordinary story in an extraordinary way.
