New in Theaters:
A Separation
The metaphor doesn’t get any clearer than this. As battling spouses shout at an invisible judge sitting where the camera is, the message is undeniable: they’re not just fighting over a relationship, but over a country, one that has both abandoned and entrapped them. The wife doesn’t want to stay with her husband, but it’s more their circumstances that she’s fighting to escape from with their daughter. Not that she, or Ashgar Farhadi’s film, comes out and says this. When the unseen judge asks if she thinks their daughter has a future in Iran, she ducks her head and doesn’t respond. Writer-director Farhadi’s subtle but explosive domestic crime story, dancing nimbly around censorship rules, makes a ringing statement as clear as the injustice witnessed in each of the main characters’ eyes.
A Separation is playing now in limited. It’s one of the best things you’ll see in 2012 or any year, check it out. You can read my full review at filmcritic.com.
