REVIEW: Unvarnished Iranian Family Drama A Separation Doesn't Go for Easy Answers

The filmmaking in Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's A Separation is so spare and unfussy that, save for the occasional camera jiggle, you're barely aware of the filmmaking at all. This is a drama about two families -- one deeply religious, one not -- who clash over an escalating series of misunderstandings, and the emotion Farhadi teases out of this increasingly complex situation are unvarnished but restrained. Nothing earth-shattering happens in A Separation, but the straightforwardness of this view of a disintegrating marriage, set in the context of complicated cultural and religious morés, is dramatic by itself.

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