A Tahar Rahim jag from A Prophet (2009). Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi who was responsible for the widely feted A Separation (2011) which I never got around to seeing and won't now.
A kitchen-sink soap opera set amongst the Iranian community in Paris. Ali Mosaffa returns from Tehran after four years at the request of separated (notionally French?) wife Bérénice Bejo who is shacking up with dry-cleaning Rahim and wants to formalise a divorce. There he acts the wise man to her and him and the kids, so obviously the role of the kid strung between separating parents. Some unprocessed stuff gets partially processed. Nobody has anything else going on in life except this mess. All of the characters are more-or-less repellent for one reason or another. The histrionics are trying, especially from leading lady Bejo. Forgiveness just happens. Not enough is asked of Rahim.
The revelatory/iterative-deepening narrative strategy was trying and flawed: I did not ever understand the motivation of the elder daughter (Pauline Burlet) to sabotage her mother, and while I can't say I was paying enough attention to everything, the daughter's meeting with the dry cleaning employee (Sabrina Ouazani) for an account of a minor event that much is made of made no sense when it is later strongly implied that the very same woman gave her the email address of Rahim's wife.
There are some beautifully constructed shots but it's really all talk with a little bit of walk.
