Love Crime

Ah, the corporate world, how one longs for its vitality and humanity! Even the most hidebound apologists of market mechanisms may not quite believe that last sentence; on the other hand, capitalism's most adamant critics have gone so far as to claim that the system is utterly incompatible with morality, although some of their proposed replacements have proven to be just as ruthless. Whatever one thinks of capitalism in its myriad guises, its aim has always been and will always be the accumulation of wealth; it is the use, distribution, and actual value of this wealth which remain rather volatile topics. So if you are a rising star in such an enterprise, say, a multinational corporation with its sleek towers and suits, a symphony of metallic ribbons, you would probably be wise to steer your own goals in the selfsame direction. All efforts, all thoughts, every fiber of your creative being should be harnessed to make your company rich, richer, and richest, because you, lone mortal, can only benefit from such an arrangement. That is, of course, unless that other commendable aspect of capitalism, unfettered competition (as only Darwin himself could have envisioned), indicates that despite your hole-hearted commitment to greed, your star is not ascending as quickly as that of your colleague down the hall, at which point a few more typically capitalist manoeuvres may be attempted. And you will find those manoeuvres, bereft of any vitality or humanity whatsoever, in this recent film.   

We are fortunate enough to have not one but two leading ladies, and lead us they most certainly will. The first is Christine Rivière (Kristen Scott Thomas), executive vice-president of the French branch of an American corporation whose specific products and services are never disclosed, probably for more than one reason, but let us move on. Christine occupies a splendid house somewhere in Paris, yet dreams of taking Manhattan by storm (there is, as it were, no other real way to take it). After a series of machinations and double-dealings, she will gain such an opportunity, and the person she should thank is her much younger subordinate, Isabelle Guérin (Ludivine Sagnier). Isabelle's attitude to corporate culture does not seem to match Christine's; that is to say, while Christine appears perfectly capable of bilking her own mother if that's what will assure her fortune and reputation, Isabelle's world view is far more nuanced. From time to time she will flash a predatory fang but, like most animals, more in self-preservation than bloodthirsty pursuit. When we first meet the two women at Christine's palatial home, we can sense jolts from a clear sexual undercurrent (Christine even sneaks in a kiss in a manner reminiscent of a chop-licking middle-aged lecher). Soon enough, however, we learn that what we perceived as physical attraction has much more to do with power, much in the same way that sexual assault has invariably been portrayed as a need for control. As Isabelle devises one brilliant business solution after another – again, we are never made privy to the details – Christine decides to send her underling in her stead to an important conference in Cairo. That she also dispatches thither her weaselly lover Philippe (Patrick Mille), the type of guy whose charm is limited to embracing one woman while winking across the room at another, should tell you all you need to know about our executive vice-president. When between Isabelle and Philippe the all-too-inevitable occurs, Christine takes another, far more cruel step (New York is at stake, after all), one she will regret monumentally and one which triggers a domino effect that will be left to the curious viewer to discover. 

The last completed work of this well-known director (who died days after its release), Love Crime is remarkable among high-quality films in that it contains nary a single memorable line of dialogue. Instead, we are treated to masterful acting and a tortuous script that may in hindsight seem implausible simply because we, unlike the dramatis personae, have already been let in on a secret. Scott Thomas is perfectly cast, not only because her angular good looks begin to resemble a knife rack, but also thanks to her natural comfort as a self-contained, almost regal entity. Sagnier has a crooked face, specifically an unevenly arched pair of brows, that can under no circumstances be considered beautiful, although many would not hesitate to consider it interesting. Her gamut of expressions would be extraordinary in any actor, much less one of her callowness, and it is from these expressions that we may derive the dialogue that the characters are not permitted to utter aloud. One of the finest moments in this regard is when Isabelle appeases an aggressive customer waiting in line behind her with a peppermint that alters his attitude entirely; another such instance is when she visits her sister, whose plain, family-based existence sheds some light on Isabelle's true motivations. Yet for all its wiles and atmosphere, Love Crime suffers from two shortcomings. The first is its title (faithful to the original Crime d'amour): while there is certainly a crime or two or three, depending on how you view matters, the love component, pace what one character asserts very late in our film, has to be deemed dubious at best (alas, this has not impeded an overtly eroticized English-language remake). The second flaw has to do with how a police inspector – yes, the police will become closely involved in the lives of our leading ladies – handles an alibi. What detective could possibly believe that being able to recount every detail of a movie means that you must have seen that movie on the night you claimed? I have pondered this point from every conceivable angle, and am now convinced that something else is in play, as evidenced by that same detective's actions in another scene. If this is not so, then the entire structure of the police procedural collapses rather violently, even if all the other pieces fit so well. Just like a lovely present wrapped in metallic ribbons.      

La doppia ora

Time will win, we are told by pundits of black holes and red giants, which means our choices are few and simple. We can bemoan our fate and live out our days in misery, or perhaps, one grey and fitful evening, abridge them violently; or we may accept our lot as temporary links on a chain of death that extends for billions of years and throw caution, money, and our own souls to the wind in the hope of forgetting our breaths' futility. Everyone, regardless of history and beliefs, will come to think the latter scenario the more palatable. After all, how could anyone reasonable even entertain a third scenario? What great mind would intuit the notion that our actions could be meaningful and that the pain we cause others could cause us more than sporadic remorse? A fair way to digress into the vagaries of this film.

We begin in a hotel room in this Italian city already known for mystical objects. A young, tomboyish woman is watching a culinary program trumpeting the value of honey and bread, and the appurtenances scattered in lusty haste on the floor – including a pair of high heels that would be hard to imagine her wearing – indicate she may have not been alone the previous night. As a chambermaid enters the room, she assures her that they will not get in each other's way. The maid smartly begins with the bathroom then finds the same tomboy at her elbow admiring her in that unique way some women are allowed to stare at other women. "You look better with your hair down," she says with a sad smile that conveys an offer, and the next thing we hear is a loud crash. The camera scurries to the bedroom to find an open window, a balcony, and a few flights below, our anonymous admirer of a moderately attractive, thirtysomething chambermaid sprawled on an expanding pool of blood. Only towards the middle of the film do we receive a hint at the role of this sequence, and even then the provided clarification lugs a few other questions in tow. 

From this oddly dissonant scene we are thrown into the world of speed dating, where our chambermaid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) looks on as each suitor devotes his three minutes to sly winks and exhortations to mark him down as a "yes." After a few hopeless sessions, there appears Guido (Filippo Timi). Guido is not particularly handsome for an Italian male, and his thick beard seems like a fortress to a mouth which frowns a little too much. That mouth remains mum until it suddenly insists that Sonia indicate "no" for the fellow who just departed (a quick look at her survey reveals a uniform voting pattern). "I'm the last," he adds wryly, "and I may be the worst of all." There is, however, something remarkably insincere to such a pronouncement. Is he malevolent? Is he someone she already knows? Or is he simply participating as a favor to the bar's manager since there always seem to be "thirty women and twenty men" for these games? As coats and owners are reunited they meet again, walking and talking not so much flirtatiously as sadly cognizant of each other's loneliness (singles bars and cruises can indeed be some of the saddest places on earth). They part company after he makes a throwaway proposal that confident men are supposed to make and confident women are supposed to refuse – but neither one of our protagonists is confident. And as he explains the film's title and punctuates the explanation with the acute cynicism of a victim, we begin to suspect darker paths ahead. 

Guido has his graphic way with another woman from the egg-timer school of romance (presumably they both checked "yes") whom, of course, he promptly throws out of his apartment with the concession that she will be allowed to call him. When she knocks moments later and a rueful but very shut door confesses that it doesn't have his number, he batters it with an angry bottle; the difference between La doppia ora and most giallo films is that we then see him cleaning up the bottle and its mess. Meanwhile back at our hotel a smiling Sonia is told by Margherita, another chambermaid: "You've smiled four times in the month you've been here, and three of them were today." Margherita rightly suspects that Sonia has found a man, and warns her appropriately: "You have to be aware of good-looking men. They drink." If that were the only thing they did. Sonia and Guido will see each other again, of course, and they will stroll around at midnight, chain-smoke, and casually reveal small things about themselves. Guido was a cop; Sonia was abandoned by her father; Guido is a security guard; Sonia liked to wander through the Slovenian woods as a child. Or was it the Italian woods? From her accent (Rappoport is a well-known Russian actress), the viewer may accept that Sonia is not an Italian national; yet if she is truly a Slovene, why is she then so jumpy when one of Guido's cop friends pulls up in his car? And why, with her excellent command of the language, apparent intelligence, and European Union passport, is she relegated to taking a job usually reserved for immigrants with none of those three qualifications? We masticate briefly on these matters just as Guido and Sonia, now perhaps in love, spend a sleepy Sunday afternoon at the art-filled villa whose elaborate security system Guido alone controls. And as they draw closer, shy and yet passionate, into their first on-screen display of affection, they are interrupted by a masked group of armed men who incapacitate them and begin looting the same villa Guido is supposed to be protecting. 

What happens thereafter is both perfectly logical and the stuff of near-supernatural events, and nothing more should be revealed. Nevertheless, the careful viewer should ask himself the following questions: Why is Sonia listening to Spanish instructional tapes (on the day of the attack, her tape says: "Please help me. Today is a very important day for me.")? What do we really know about that photo of Guido and his allegedly deceased wife? Why does Sonia seem to know who Dolores Dominguez is? Why does Guido's cop friend Dante relate to him a long story about his own ex-wife? Why does one of the hotel guests call Sonia a "go-go dancer"? We may ask to what extant La doppia ora has the makings of a great film, whether the subject matter it treats is too slim and, ultimately, too personal to merit such status, questions justified by the film's curt if inevitable conclusion. While these pages have repeatedly championed the personal over the universal, the truly trivial – petty disputes, vendettas, grudges between schoolchildren, as well as anything and everything materialistic – is not fit to print. Sonia's tragedy, if that is the right word, is magnified in our common struggle against the past, against its prejudices and our mistakes, and the cloven structure of the film betrays a deeper divide between what was taken from her and what she took back. Took back? Don't let the poor-immigrant-ignored-daughter rigmarole fool you. Sonia, you see, is a taker, if an occasionally reluctant one. Her father may have thrown her to the wolves, but she had already made their acquaintance and doesn't fear them quite as much as you would think. And maybe we should recall that famous book about another femme fatale and the quote about being borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Cape Fear

This film begins with one of the most heavy-handed title sequences in recent memory, proceeds to a narrator who is both unappealing and, frankly, a twit, and then hands off the baton to Max Cady (Robert De Niro). Whenever it is enraptured by Cady's words, the film blooms and glows. We first meet the tattooed back of him (with truth and justice as captions) before an "eight-by-nine" library of a jail cell. On his wall hang pictures of mustached dictators that we would all do well to forget, as well as law books with stipulations and codes that he justifiably cannot. "What about your books, Cady?" asks a guard as he struts out of the Georgia State Correctional Facility and into our camera, literally ramming it with his ground teeth. "Already read 'em," he replies coolly. He has had all the time in the world – fourteen years, to be precise. And it is clear to absolutely every viewer of Cape Fear that after spending a third of his life in lockup, Max Cady is now on a mission.

That mission will take us to New Essex, North Carolina, that type of sleepy little town that tends to harbor the wickedest of secrets. It will also introduce us to the Bowdens, "Slippery" Sam (Nick Nolte, who has never looked quite so slick and unpleasant), an attorney, Leigh (Jessica Lange), a designer, and their only child, fifteen-year-old Danielle (Juliette Lewis). Even from the opening vignettes, one has the impression that the Bowdens have seen far unhappier times. Too many of their words seem weighed as if they were all striving not to exceed some invisible boundaries of pain. Lange, for example, is made to look as dowdy as is possible for a woman of her attractiveness (my childhood awe of her in this film has never dissipated). This otherwise inexplicable move serves two purposes: mother and daughter gain a passing resemblance and Sam's roving eye seems extenuated. One June evening a family outing to the movies is tarnished by the maniacal laughs of Cady, who happens to be enjoying a cigar (the camera caresses his bikinied lighter) only a couple of rows in front of them. Our cigar-smoking hyena never even turns to address the indignant requests so Sam orders his clan to decamp. When Danielle eggs on her father in that way we all have of taking pride in those who protect us ("Dad, you should have punched him out"), Sam espies an opportunity for a parental lesson in non-violence. Yet it is precisely here – as if to undermine Sam's credentials as a domestic lawgiver – that Leigh chuckles that Sam should be used to "fighting dirty," a comment at which he takes umbrage.  As he goes to pay for their after-movie snack, however, Sam is informed that "everything's been taken care of." The caretaker? The fellow with the cigar glowering at them from the red convertible in the parking lot. But that person and his car are now gone.

Since Cady is a very recent ex-convict and Sam a criminal defense lawyer, we suspect a vivid back story. We get one, and it comprises the primary distinction between Scorsese's plot and that of the 1962 original. While the first Sam Bowden is scapegoated by a madman whose legal culpability was never really in question, our Sam is not quite as innocent. Once upon a time and place, 1977 Atlanta to be exact, Max Cady couldn't even read the laws he had every intention of breaking, a handicap that obliged his kindly attorney to enunciate every statute for Cady's own frustrated half-comprehension. About the only thing that Sam did not have to dictate to his client was the latter's eventual conviction for the sexual assault and battery of a teenage girl. Events throughout Cape Fear make it painfully obvious that Max Cady is not a good man victimized by an imperfect justice system; in fact, one might properly wonder why on earth we would ever release such a beast from incarceration. Nevertheless, the letter of our imperfect laws was not followed: after Cady buttonholes him in his car and punctuates their reacquaintance with a whisper that sounds a lot like "you're going to learn about loss," Sam confesses his own sins to another attorney. And what was Sam's unpardonable offense? Nothing really if you understand guilt as absolute and not relative to the weaknesses of the prosecution and its toolbox. Looking back at what he did and did not do for his client, Sam cannot help but imagine his own daughter, now the age of the victim in 1977, and consider Cady's disgusting acts in a more personalized context ("If you had seen," he assures the same skeptical colleague, "what he did to this girl"). Sam's moral character is further tainted by his implied escapades with a frisky law clerk (Illeana Douglas, Scorsese's girlfriend at the time) about whom he does not see any need to tell his wife. One evil night, of course, Cady will happen to chat up this same clerk, whose regrettable taste in men turns out to be unwavering. At the precise center of the film, in a masterful scene more suspenseful than anything involving a killer shark or slasher, Cady will also get a crack at sweet helpless Danielle. While Lewis as a sex symbol remains one of Hollywood's greatest implausibilities, she can play rather effortlessly the incipient rebel who might like a little dope and a little of this author. And Danielle has long since determined that her parents are neither soul mates nor entities worthy of their proclaimed authority, which will explain a few minor discrepancies in our story.

The conclusion to Cape Fear was quickly spoiled by trailers that prove you can't just name a film after a location and not feature its natural obstacles. I remember seeing it in the theater at Danielle's film age and being put off by the utter inevitability of what happens, an opinion I swiftly forsook upon reviewing. As it were, the film's strength is drawn specifically from its irresistible force, from the notion of old sins that recur to the sinner, from the sense of implacable doom. Although not his best role, De Niro immortalizes himself in Max Cady in no small part through his much-ballyhooed fitness and his even more celebrated tattoos, most of which avow Biblical vengeance. Despite this unorthodox appearance, Cady is so smooth, silver-tongued, and terrifyingly literate that at times one forgets his most recent permanent address. Then we realize he has been performing this role, in gradually modulated versions of perfection, for the last fourteen years. His very best monologue is delivered in his convertible before a standing Sam after the latter has just been informed of when exactly Max learned to read in jail and what he chose as his favorite texts. In this scene, if but for one or two seconds, De Niro succeeds in making us pity someone who was, at least in terms of due process, deprived unfairly of his freedom. When Sam interrupts this brilliant flow of details by proposing monetary compensation, Cady simply crunches the numbers and accuses his former attorney of offering him below minimum wage. "Not to mention," he mentions anyway, "the family and respect [he] lost" during his long sentence. The worst sequence involves a hare-brained scheme to lure Cady into a trap in the Bowdens' house, and the less said about these minutes the better. But the finest moments remain those at the film's midpoint between Danielle and Cady. Here several possible, perfectly viable outcomes present themselves, but only the best and, in a way, the most shocking occurs. It is also here that Cady warns the youngest Bowden that "every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Your daddy, too. Every man. Every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise." And whatever that paradise might entail is not ours to imagine.

The Lives of Others

The grass, we are told, is always greener somewhere else; a less philosophical slant to that old adage summed up most concisely by this French poet in the phrase la vie est ailleurs. Yes, in a way, life is always elsewhere. When we choose to live in one city, love one woman, read one book, befriend one colleague, we necessarily forsake all other cities, women, books, and colleagues, at least for some period of time. There are many among us who do not have broad selections in these categories; many more privileged persons can only lament their destinies and look upon the choices of others with the greenest of eyes (the coincidence of color is striking). The higher we get on the totem pole of privilege and ease, the more likely we are to second-guess what we have made of our allotments – such is the luxury of having too much time and too many competing brands and alternatives. Not so in most countries of the world. Despite our amazing industrial advances in the last hundred years, most countries are still limited in what they can offer their citizens, both commercially and socially. Most people still marry partners from the same region in which they were born; most people, in fact, do not spend appreciable amounts of time far from that selfsame region. This rule of thumb used to apply to Europe, albeit less so, before the advent of the European Community, which has been slackening controls on labor mobility little by little. Now a forty-year-old computer programmer from Kaunas can pack up his things and move to Paris with nary a thought about visas, permits, and other obstacles of immigration – and for that reason alone, he will be less likely to immigrate. Less likely because regardless of his degree of Gallicization, he will ultimately miss home, the home that he was not really allowed to leave for at least half of his life, and those memories, however austere, will propel him back to the cultural milieu in which he feels most comfortable. But what if the culture of both countries were once identical? What if there were two realities, the open, liberal, creative culture you had always known, and another reality – directed, Spartan, ruthless – a mockery of the first culture aimed at some untenable goal in some unthinkable future? Such is the conundrum of the protagonist of this glorious film.

The original German title would translate as The Life of Others, suggesting a Boschian gaze on the entirety of alternatives to your own existence. But in the plural, we get the sense of tangible life, of individual fate and collective oppression. Our hero, if we can call him that, is Gerd Wiesler (the late Ulrich Mühe), a career Stasi officer who is so regimented as to be unable to enjoy any of life's details except the precision of his routine. Were Wiesler's face a true reflection of his soul, we would be worried that his body might contain nothing more than rotting bones and flesh. His assignment as one of East Germany's most devoted agents is to sit patiently and collect incriminating information on anyone who could possibly betray the socialist cause. I suppose the bulk of intelligence legwork involves trials of patience; but when you factor in stereotypical German thoroughness and diligence you have quite a project. Wiesler's current quarry is playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who embodies that most feared enemy of totalitarian regimes, the artistic intellectual. Dreyman's résumé includes a series of successful publications and a coveted actress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), as his girlfriend. Still, something is missing in Georg's life. His creative potential has not been fully achieved, although these thoughts plague any artist of merit from adolescence to the grave, and Dreyman is said to have started looking to the emerald fields of his Western confederates for inspiration. West Germany's economic renaissance was one of the more extraordinary turnarounds in modern history and the details of its resurgence, despite efforts to gag the actual figures, were well-known to citizens of East Germany. In lieu of speaking out against the regime, which would spell an end to his burgeoning career, Dreyman tries to enjoy his status as a semi-celebrity with witticisms and hints at the power and value of artistic expression regardless of the politics of one's country. Dreyman is an East German citizen, but his lineage is to German artists of all times.

These ingredients sound like a plausible defection case to Wiesler, who has little appreciation for the arts since they tend to entail rather impractical matters. He will watch some television now and then, in between sessions with paid escorts, but his mind is focused on the Darwinian struggle to survive and protect – and in this respect, he is the fittest sort of predator. Dreyman's apartment is quickly tapped and Wiesler settles into his listening post at clockwork shifts with the facility of someone for whom spying comprises more muscle memory than thought. Wiesler reports to his superior (Ulrich Tukur) that he has yet to find any evidence incriminating Dreyman, but then again the Stasi could probably drum up something untoward against even an automaton like Wiesler. And here is where we suspect a twist will occur, and it most certainly does. Wiesler discovers a piece of information to which the audience has already been privy: that a filthy hog of a government official by the name of Hempf  (Thomas Thieme) wants Christa-Maria all to his greasy self. Consequently, Dreyman must be found guilty of harboring pro-Western sympathies. Most drones in a police state of this caliber and unscrupulousness would emit a chuckle and carry out the order thinking lasciviously of their own past and future conquests. But not our Wiesler. Wiesler is, you see, the ideal Stasi member, completely incapable of contravening socialist concepts of equality and fair play even in favor of some bloated cadre's lusty whims. Since tales like these either have characters who never change and slowly become symbols for whatever ideals they cherish, or feature an unexpected change in a person captive to antiquated missions, we sense that Wiesler will do something dramatic. Could Wiesler even regain the soul he forsook years ago when he bought into the artificial brotherhood of man based on its least impressive commonality, money? What could he, a mid-range officer with little pull apart from local operations hope to achieve against Hempf, the epitome of all totalitarian regimes at all times, a man gorged on money, power, and, from the looks of it, an ungodly amount of Bratwurst?

What Wiesler does and, specifically, what he doesn't do, will not be revealed here. The viewer who craves a happy ending may take solace in the fact that the two Germanies reunified into the Mecca of culture and artistic genius for which they were once exclusively known. This same viewer may be informed in his readings about the film that there never was a Wiesler, or a Dreyman, or an actress as enchanting as Christa-Maria Sieland, and that these bare facts reduce the validity of such an enterprise, reserving it for pure fiction, which as we all know has little to do with reality. But in essence, Wiesler, Dreyman, and Sieland all existed in exactly the form you see on the screen; their thoughts, concerns and hopes were all the same; only their actions and fates may not have been accurately portrayed. Maybe one day a file will surface from the bottomless trench that was East Germany's database in which all three of these characters will be clearly alive, Wiesler perhaps under his code name HGW – Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler – XX/ 7; maybe Dreyman will indeed have a copy of a Sonata of a Good Man; perhaps Sieland will be allowed to be with whom she wants and not have to cheat death by cheating on her beloved. Until then, you can enjoy one of the most spectacular films in recent memory.                         

A Separation

"What you are telling me," says a judge who remains off-camera in the opening scene of this film, "is not a good reason for divorce." That very principle distinguishes more conservative countries from the West's revolving-door marriage policy, a situation on which I will comment no further. Our invisible arbiter generously floats three scenarios in which the plaintiff, Simin Lavasani (Leila Hatami), might have good cause to rid herself of her husband, Nader Lavasani (Peyman Maadi): he is an addict; he beats you; or he does not give you an allowance. Students of human nature will know this triptych as the three failings of man: the suppression of his desires and emotions; allowing thorough conquest to his desires and emotions; and the forsaking of spiritual salvation for the idolatry of his piggy bank. The modern mind also knows them as the indefinite roulette of drugs, violence, and greed in the news, tales we have all heard a thousand times but which, for those involved, do not diminish in their tragedy. 

Nader is, however, none of the above. On the contrary, even Simin assures the judge that her husband is "a nice, decent man." What she fails to mention is that he is a nice, decent man who ministers to his Alzheimer's-stricken father by himself. The old fellow has a sweet, soft, blank look.  We do not know whether his life was marked by sin or goodness; we know nothing about him except that he is Nader's father. Not once do we hear of siblings who could help in his efforts; in fact, no one even suggests it, meaning either there are none or the matter has been so often discussed that it never needs to be brought up again. This renders Simin's request all the more cruel: after "eighteen months of running around and expenses," the couple and their daughter, 11-year-old Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director's own daughter), have received visas to go and live abroad. This was six months ago and there remain only forty days before the visas expire. Importantly, the destination is never specified, because that would generate an unneeded political angle to a film that will focus its attention on two concepts of truth – the concept embedded in written law, and the concept particular to each individual. A casual observer may think that Simin's desire to leave Iran is justified given what we may have heard of its political climate. Yet by refraining from truly criticizing a political or religious code, A Separation is very consciously hermetic, urging us to judge the actions and words of the characters only within their limited sphere. If that is the case, then Simin is wrong: the couple can always reapply for visas in the future once Nader's father has succumbed to darkness, or they can simply send their daughter abroad. If her husband is willing to forego this opportunity, Simin claims, then he "obviously does not care about his daughter's future." "So you think the children living in this country don't have a future?" replies the still-unseen judge, a response that dampens her aggressiveness. When Simin meekly explains that she would rather her daughter "not grow up in these circumstances," the judge quickly answers:"What circumstances? Is she better off with two parents here or with no father over there?" To this the couple falls predictably silent. No one would ever claim that a separation of two good people who "have lived together for fourteen years" could possibly be beneficial for their child.

Two good people? Yes, actions throughout the film indicate that both Simin and Nader are morally responsible citizens, relatively well-off, well-educated, and open-minded. While they have numerous advantages in life, they are neither snobs nor vulgarians. And while others might eschew hiring an underprivileged woman (Sareh Bayat) to look after Nader's father, they have only the usual qualms of entrusting a house key to a stranger. We give away nothing by adding that as the woman, Razieh, begins to come to the house, Simin moves to her mother's place in symbolic defiance. Termeh, who will ultimately judge her parents in the film's final scene, remains with Nader because she knows, as one character observes much later on, that her mother would never go anywhere without her. This unambiguous truth pains Nader, who now questions his daughter's allegiance and consecrates far too much precious time trying to secure it, which brings us to another point. A Separation is a strange and unique film because it repeatedly and gleefully denies our expectations. Instead of showing us, as the title suggests, the difficulties a troubled couple might endure, it provides a metaphor for their split and their differing priorities. Razieh, now a substitute for the departed Simin, comes to help Nader but does not want to stay: the commute is too long; the pay is measly, even in her dire financial straits; she has to bring along her four-year-old daughter Somayeh, but with all the caregiving and housework has almost no time for her; she is repulsed by the need to change Nader's father like one would a baby (her aversion is later consistently attributed to religious propriety); and her volatile, unemployed husband Hodjat (a marvelous Shahab Hosseini) neither knows nor would approve of her new job. After a couple of tiring days, including one in which Nader's father escapes to buy a newspaper, Razieh is fired by Nader for having left the apartment and tied his father to the radiator. Nader also accuses her of theft, triggering a chain of events that must be left to the curious viewer to discover.

There is something else about Razieh that we will come to learn, and in a key scene in the film, we hear a personal conversation that is unmistakable in its subject matter, but the camera's placement does not allow us to confirm precisely which characters are also privy to it. Razieh is a woman of faith who nevertheless time and again will act in blatant contradiction to what we understand to be her religious principles. Why would she do such a thing? The answer may be found in her husband, whose uncouth and deranged behavior so contrasts with Nader's as to make the two husbands obvious foils. Hodjat was once a cobbler who was released without compensation and told "to seek justice if he pleases." Justice failed him, and now he cannot support his family, a multi-pronged curse in a conservative country. As a result, Hodjat believes in God, but no longer believes in man's ability to do God's will. This makes him desperate, crazed, depressed, and violent. He is capable of anything, and everyone around him knows it.  Again, those who tend to think of man as predominantly a political animal will understand Hodjat's and Razieh's roles in very distinct symbols. To wit, the conservative culture evident may strike the outsider as odd since it succeeds in making women look uniform, unrecognizable from the back (even more so with schoolgirls), injecting otherwise untenable suspense into a couple of scenes when Nader is looking for his daughter. Farhadi seems to have considered this inevitability and gently steers us away from it by reinforcing why Hodjat has some good left in him, namely his honor and dignity, the last things that can be stripped from the poor, even if the cobbler repeatedly expresses himself in a regrettable fashion. There is also a revelation towards the end of the film that is not so much exciting as devastatingly truthful, and part of that revelation is the admission that we are not stronger than the law. The law, however well intended it may seem, only factors in certain details because otherwise it would become a holistic judgement of one's life, of one's sins and crimes over the course of thoughts and actions and years. It is then hardly a coincidence that all five main characters will end up doing something they believe complies with the spirit, not the letter, of the law, and each action has its own particular consequences. Perhaps that is why the term "legally separated" sounds more like a condemnation than a reprieve.