Repost: The Past (May 30th and 31st at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE PAST screens Friday May 30th at 5:00 pm and Saturday May 31st at 6:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Iranian writer and director Asghar Farhadi's 2011 film A SEPARATION, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, was a taut domestic drama that encompassed issues of family, culture and religion. His newest, THE PAST (Le Passé), is a somewhat less absorbing domestic drama without the earlier film's cultural weight.

THE PAST, in French and set in Paris, concerns the return of the Iranian-born Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) to Paris to finalize his divorce from his French wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo, from THE ARTIST). While staying at Marie's house, Ahmad is drawn into an intense drama involving Marie, her children and her boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim), whom she plans to marry.

The Past (opens February 7th at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[THE PAST opens in Cleveland on Friday February 7th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Iranian writer and director Asghar Farhadi's 2011 film A SEPARATION, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, was a taut domestic drama that encompassed issues of family, culture and religion. His newest, THE PAST (Le Passé), is a somewhat less absorbing domestic drama without the earlier film's cultural weight.

THE PAST, in French and set in Paris, concerns the return of the Iranian-born Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) to Paris to finalize his divorce from his French wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo, from THE ARTIST). While staying at Marie's house, Ahmad is drawn into an intense drama involving Marie, her children and her boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim), whom she plans to marry.

Fireworks Wednesday (May 17th and 18th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)l

[FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY screens Thursday May 17th at 8:45 pm and Friday May 18th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I don't comprehend why the gays want so eagerly to have a Constitutional right to be married. I'm not even so sure heterosexuals should have the right to be married. If waterboarding is considered a human-rights violation, certainly marriage meets the Geneva Convention definition of torture. And speaking of waterboarding, and bad marriages, with the United States probably heading for ruinous war with Iran we'll make this topic a nice happy segue into FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY, a tense marital drama from the world of Iranian cinema, made in 2006 but just reaching these shores. With any luck - "Insh'Allah, as they say - Iran's nuclear missiles will be just as slow crossing the Atlantic.

The action of FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY takes place during the New Year holiday when celebrating rowdies are lighting fireworks everywhere. Yeah, if you think the redneck-Bubba primate fascination with gunpowder going off is bad in Cleveland, it's even worse in Tehran; tumult and chaos tighten outside the screws on an unhappy household situation. Rouhi, a newlywed young maid still in the blissful-honeymoon stage, is hired to clean some adjacent apartments in an urban high-rise. Rouhi steps into an emotional minefield, with upscale Mrs. Mojdeh Samii in a neurotic meltdown, consumed with suspicion that her husband is having an affair with another woman in the building.