Although Asghar Farhadi finished his multilayered mystery About Elly a couple years before his masterful A Separation, it’s only getting a proper American release now. It’s about time.
My review for About Elly is at Film Journal International:
Like bloodhounds that can’t ignore a scent once they have been put on it, the films of Asghar Farhadi keep circling back to one redolent and persistent problem: the demeaning, low status of women in Iranian society. They are not message films, announcing their lecturing intent by yoking their narratives to the most politically advantageous plot points. Instead, they tell stories that would carry dramatic weight regardless of their setting, and show how the circumscribed lives of Iranian women exacerbate already lamentable situations…
Here’s the trailer:
Like the writer said, The past is never dead, it isn’t even past. In Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi’s newest drama, a French woman (Berenice Bejo, from The Artist) invites her ex-husband back from Iran supposedly to finalize their divorce only to ensnare him in her tangled new relationship.
Chris Barsanti 
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