The Past (2013 film)
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''The Past'' (french: link=no, Le Passé, ''Gozašte'') is a 2013 French–Italian–Iranian drama film, written and directed by Iranian director
Asghar Farhadi Asghar Farhadi ( fa, اصغر فرهادی, ; born 7 May 1972)Soureh Movie Database
and starring
Bérénice Bejo Bérénice Bejo (; born 7 July 1976) is a French-Argentine actress best known for playing Christiana in ''A Knight's Tale'' (2001) and Peppy Miller in '' The Artist'' (2011). Her work in the latter earned her a nomination for the Academy Award ...
,
Tahar Rahim Tahar Rahim (born 4 July 1981) is a Franco-Algerian actor. He is known for his starring role as Malik El Djebena in the 2009 award-winning French movie '' A Prophet'' by Jacques Audiard, FBI Agent Ali Soufan in '' The Looming Tower'', Judas in ...
and Ali Mosaffa. The film was nominated for the
Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
award at the
2013 Cannes Film Festival The 66th Cannes Film Festival took place in Cannes, France, from 15 to 26 May 2013. Steven Spielberg was the head of the jury for the main competition. New Zealand film director Jane Campion was the head of the jury for the Cinéfondation and S ...
and won the festival's
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury The Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (french: Prix du Jury Œcuménique) is an independent film award for feature length films shown at major international film festivals since 1973. The award was created by Christian film makers, film critics and ot ...
. Bejo also won the festival's Best Actress Award. It was shown at the
2013 Toronto International Film Festival The 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 5 and 15, 2013. '' The Fifth Estate'' was selected as the opening film and '' Life of Crime'' was the closing film. 75 films were ...
. The film was selected as the Iranian entry for the
Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
86th Academy Awards The 86th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2013 and took place on March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. ...
, but it was not nominated. The film was nominated for
Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
71st Golden Globe Awards The 71st Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2013, was broadcast live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on January 12, 2014, by NBC, as part of the 2013-14 film awards season. The ...
.


Plot

Ahmad, an Iranian man, returns to France after four years to finalise his divorce with his wife Marie. On the way to her home, he learns that she has begun a relationship with Samir, the owner of a dry cleaning service and he is to share a room with Samir's son Fouad. At Marie's request, he speaks to her daughter from a previous marriage, Lucie, regarding her recent troubled behavior. Lucie disapproves of Marie's new relationship. Ahmad and Marie attend court to complete their divorce. Just before the meeting with the officials, she tells him that she is pregnant with Samir's child. Ahmad continues to counsel Lucie, hoping to reconcile her to the situation. She reveals that Samir is still married and his wife is in a coma after a suicide attempt, caused by the revelation that Samir and Marie were conducting an affair. Samir tells Ahmad that his wife suffered from depression and the suicide attempt was in fact caused by an incident with a customer in his shop. His wife was unaware of his affair and he arranges for Naïma, his employee, who witnessed both the suicide attempt and the incident in the shop, to meet with Lucie. After hearing Naïma's story, Lucie becomes distressed and confesses that she forwarded Marie and Samir’s email correspondence to Samir's wife the day before she tried to kill herself, after calling her at the dry cleaning shop. Lucie disappears, and Ahmad and Samir search for her. Ahmad finds Lucie, who has been staying with a friend, and tries to convince her to tell Marie what she did, saying that Marie has a right to know, now that she is carrying Samir's child. Lucie does so and Marie becomes enraged, telling Lucie to leave, which she does. Ahmad calms the situation and Marie goes after Lucie, asking her to come back, which she does. After questioning what feelings he may still hold for his wife, Marie tells Samir what Lucie did. Samir finds this hard to accept and questions Naïma about the events leading up his wife's suicide attempt. Naïma states his wife wasn't even in the shop the day that Lucie said she called. After Marie accuses Lucie of lying, Lucie maintains her version of events saying that she spoke to a woman with an accent on the phone. Samir realizes that she actually spoke to Naïma, who then gave Lucie his wife's email address. He confronts Naïma, who confesses and explains that his wife had always been jealous of her and had been trying to get her either sacked or deported from France and had initiated the confrontation with the customer. However, Naïma believes that his wife never read the emails, because she came into the shop and chose to drink bleach in front of her, instead of in front of Samir or Marie. Samir and Marie discuss the events and their relationship. Samir decides that they should focus on their future, while Marie appears conflicted. Ahmad prepares to return to Iran. He says farewell to the children and attempts to talk to Marie about the end of their marriage, but Marie does not let him, stating that she doesn't need to know such things now. Meanwhile, Samir visits his wife in the hospital with a selection of perfumes, which the doctors have recommended in order to possibly initiate a response. He sprays onto his neck some of his cologne and leans over her lying comatose in her hospital bed. With his face close to his wife's he whispers to her to squeeze his hand if she can smell it. A tear rolls down her check but she remains comatose, and he looks down at her hand, which may or may not be holding his. It is unclear in the final scene whether she is responsive or not.


Cast

*
Bérénice Bejo Bérénice Bejo (; born 7 July 1976) is a French-Argentine actress best known for playing Christiana in ''A Knight's Tale'' (2001) and Peppy Miller in '' The Artist'' (2011). Her work in the latter earned her a nomination for the Academy Award ...
as Marie Brisson *
Tahar Rahim Tahar Rahim (born 4 July 1981) is a Franco-Algerian actor. He is known for his starring role as Malik El Djebena in the 2009 award-winning French movie '' A Prophet'' by Jacques Audiard, FBI Agent Ali Soufan in '' The Looming Tower'', Judas in ...
as Samir * Ali Mosaffa as Ahmad *
Pauline Burlet Pauline Burlet (born 9 April 1996) is a Belgian actress, who starred as 'Lili Franchet' in the French TV series ''Résistance''. Her first major role was in the 2007 film, '' La Vie en rose'', as a young Edith Piaf. Burlet won a Magritte Award ...
as Lucie * Elyes Aguis as Fouad * Jeanne Jestin as Léa *
Sabrina Ouazani Sabrina Ouazani (born 6 December 1988) is a French actress of Algerian descent. She is best known internationally for her performance as Frida in ''Games of Love and Chance'' and as Charlotte Ben Smires in Netflix's hit rom-com series ''The Hook ...
as Naïma *
Babak Karimi Babak Karimi ( fa, بابک کریمی, born 1960) is a Czech-Iranian actor. For his role in ''A Separation'', he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in 2011. Filmography Film * ''Tickets'' (2 ...
as Shahryar *
Valeria Cavalli Valeria Cavalli (born 1 November 1959) is an Italian actress and model. Selected filmography External links * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cavalli, Valeria Living people Italian female models 1959 births Italian film actresses Italian televi ...
as Valeria * Eleonora Marino as Marie's colleague * Hossein Rahmani Manesh as Pooya


Reception

The film received universal critical acclaim. It holds a 93% "certified fresh" rating on
review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 144 reviews with a
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
score of 8.2/10 and the site's consensus: "Beautifully written, sensitively directed, and powerfully acted, ''The Past'' serves as another compelling testament to Asghar Farhadi's gift for finely layered drama." On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a normalized score of 85% based on 41 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". The German-English website KinoCritics.com wrote the three main actors Bejo, Rahim and Mosaffa were convincing in their roles and added "a natural liveliness" to their scenes.


Accolades


See also

* 2013 in film *
List of French films of 2013 A list of films produced in France in 2013. References External links * 2013 in France * 2013 in French television French films of 2013at the Internet Movie DatabaseFrench films of 2013at Cinema-francais.fr * List of 2013 box office number-o ...
*
List of Iranian films of the 2010s A list of films produced in Iran ordered by year of release in the 2010–2019, 2010s. For an alphabetical list of Iranian films see :Iranian films 2010s References External links Iranian film
at the Internet Movie Database {{DEFAULTS ...
*
List of Iranian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Iran has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film regularly since 1994. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Imperial Iran sent a single film in 1977. Iran has submitted a total of twenty-six films for Osca ...
*
List of Italian films of the 2010s A list of some notable films produced in the Cinema of Italy ordered by year and decade of release For an alphabetical list of articles on Italian films see :Italian films. 1910s * List of Italian films of 1910 * List of Italian films of 1911 * ...
*
List of submissions to the 86th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of submissions to the 86th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award ...


References


External links

* at
Sony Pictures Classics Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produc ...
* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Past, The 2013 films 2013 drama films 2013 multilingual films French drama films Iranian multilingual films French multilingual films Italian drama films 2010s French-language films 2010s Persian-language films Films about dysfunctional families Films set in France Films shot in Paris Films directed by Asghar Farhadi Sony Pictures Classics films StudioCanal films 2010s French films