In Contention

Tag: Asghar Farhadi

  • Iran’s ‘A Separation’ latest to enter Oscar race

    I’d say this was a no-brainer, but one should never underestimate the ability of countries to shoot themselves in the foot when selecting their submissions for the foreign-language Oscar. Happily, Iran has done no such thing, picking Asghar Farhadi’s critically beloved festival sensation “A Separation” as their pony this year.

    It’s a choice that I suspect will pay off handsomely. I’ll be astonished if the film doesn’t at least make the January shortlist — it should play well enough with general voters, but the executive committee should swoop in if it doesn’t. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine this smart, humanistic marital drama going all the way to the podium, particularly with Sony Pictures Classics — unmatched campaigners in this category — steering the film.

    Ecstatic critical notices at Toronto and Telluride (Kris’s take here) are merely the newest feather in the film’s cap: it already nabbed the Golden Bear (plus Best Actor and Actress) at February’s Berlin fest, and was released to a shower of acclaim in the UK this summer. If the buzz continues to build for this late-December release, could Sony even angle for extra attention in the highly pliable Best Original Screenplay category? A far-fetched suggestion, perhaps, but I wonder.

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  • TELLURIDE: Sony Classics, IFC and Searchlight party into the night

    I opted out of tonight’s screening of “Butter” largely because — sorry to say — the Galaxy theater is just too cramped and uncomfortable and hot to fully enjoy a film experience. For me, anyway. I tend to be a furnace regardless, but they need to pump some AC into that joint. By some accounts, though, it was a delightful if somewhat skippable affair. Instead I took to the party circuit, as three studios chose Saturday to hold their talent-studded affairs.

    The night started with Sony Pictures Classics’ annual dinner gathering at La Marmotte. In attendance were “A Dangerous Method” scribe Christopher Hampton, “A Separation” writer/director Asghar Farhadi and “In Darkness” director Agnieszka Holland. Pay close attention to those last two, as they will no doubt figure into this year’s race for Best Foreign Language Film.

    I had a few choice moments with Hampton to discuss his collaboration with David Cronenberg. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet seen the film (Sunday night seems to make the most sense), but I did ask about his take on some reviewers (including our own Guy Lodge) preferring a bit of overt and edgy Cronenberg for a clearly sexual project. His response was that austerity was preferred considering a commitment to truth, and indeed, it seems to me a more cerebral approach would be, at the very least, more realistic for a film such as this. I’ll have an opinion soon enough.

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  • BERLIN: ‘Nader and Simin’ wins big

    Unlike large voting bodies such as the Academy, the decisions of rotating festival juries are rarely easy to anticipate — when only six people are determining the awards, as was the case at this year’s Berlinale, who knows what idiosyncratic personal tastes might come into play?

    So it is that the only truly surprising thing about this year’s Berlin Competition winners, announced at a ceremony last night, is just how unsurprising they are. As I predicted in my Friday review of both films, Isabella Rossellini and her fellow jurors sided with the critics, as it came down to Béla Tarr’s imposing survival study “The Turin Horse” and Asghar Farhadi’s intricate moral drama “Nader and Simin, a Separation” for the Golden Bear.

    As expected, it was Farhadi’s more accessible, though no less deserving, film that came out on top — two years after the filmmaker took the festival’s Best Director award for “About Elly” — while a seemingly surly Tarr had to settle for the runner-up Grand Prix. (The severe Hungarian auteur was there to pick up his award, but refused to give an acceptance speech.)

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  • BERLIN: Béla Tarr and Golden Bear favorites

    The Berlinale competition drew to a close this morning, with Joshua Marston’s “The Forgiveness of Blood” — more on that in a final roundup this weekend — wrapping up a selection that’s been a typically mixed bag for the festival. Healthy critical argument has flared up over a number of titles — including lone Asian entry “Come Rain, Come Shine,” a bare-bones day in the life of a separating couple that struck some as delicately affecting and others merely as attractively vacant. (I’m one of the others, sad to say.)

    Meanwhile, films the critical majority has sided against include “Lipstikka,” a reportedly bananas Israeli melodrama that Telegraph critic Tim Robey warned me off with this choice dialogue sample: “You play games with me, like you used to do with your men, with your sex and boobs.” Part of me regrets missing this one.

    Amid the splinters of the Competition, however, a pair of critical favorites have moved comfortably ahead of the pack in terms of general approval and all-round buzz — they screened three days ago, eons in festival time, yet I’ve barely heard anyone talk about any other films since. I’m afraid to say that my own top film of the fest, Cameroon-set German drama “Sleeping Sickness” (reviewed here), isn’t one of them.

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