terrible... so disappointed.

People are voting emotionally.

A Masterpiece!

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Farhadi's characters are always so flawed that they make mistakes that will have great consequences yet so humane and relatable that there won't be a single character in the film who we can blame for anything. His skill to bring out the best in his actors is also exemplary, the naturality with which each of them lives in front of the camera is incredible. This is by far his weakest film among the 4 films I've seen and I look forward to exploring the rest of his filmography.

Do you know those people who look down on European films? They cling to action and claim that European cinema was sooooo boring, that nothing ever happens in French films in particular. All the protagonists do (apart from drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes) was to have problems, suffer from their problems and talk about their problems.How I hate this attitude. Yet I have to admit that "Le Passé" proves them right. This film is the worst cliché of European art-house movie come to life: Nothing ever happens and all the people on screen do (apart from drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and shouting at their kids) is have problems, suffer from them and talk about them.The story is about a web of relationships that are revealed through the two hours runtime. Everybody's unhappiness ends up to be depending on the question who has the responsibility for driving Samir's wife into a failed suicide attempt. To learn that we have to go through endless dramatic dialogs of who wants to leave whom, who fails to have a life with whom and who drives whom crazy.All personalities are failures in maintaining stable relationships with each other - another annoyance to the spectator. Though there are some interesting points, like Ahmad (Marie's ex-husband) being the more empathic contact for the children and why Marie chose Samir instead of him, it could all be quite an amusing setup, but all of this remains unanswered.The whole story reminded me very much of a typical Chekhov play, but then Chekhov wrote his studies 150 years ago, and Farhadi has nothing new to add.Three stars for the actors, that's it.

Ahmad arrives in Paris from Iran after a four years absence to finalize his divorce from Marie. He finds that she is living with another man Samir and his son Fouad. The house is in disarray with Fouad acting up. Samir is a drycleaner whose wife is in a come. Marie doesn't get along with older daughter Lucie. She has another daughter Léa, both are from before Ahmad. She's pregnant which Ahmad unknowingly reveals to Lucie. Lucie has suspicions about Samir's wife's supposed suicide attempt which left her in a coma.There is this underlining tension from the first moment of the movie. The audience is in the dark about this family which is revealed slowly. The first half of the movie is a little slow. The piecing together of the family does keep my attention. The personal drama packs quite a punch when it happens. Director Asghar Farhadi's style is a bit slow and doesn't push the tension to the fullest. If the pace is tightened, the drama could be heightened.

Is it the man who leaves his wife and daughters, the 2 cheaters or the 2 saboteurs that drove a women into suicide? It's a film about people with problems. And it's their own fault. Everyone just intensifies the problems of the others simply because "they are not happy".I don't understand all the positive feedback, and reviews like "a story about normal people". These people are not normal, they each work hard to make the life of their "loved ones" as miserable as possible. If this is normal, i don't know a lot of normal people.If you enjoy a film about people blaming each other for the mess they created, this one is for you.4 stars because of good acting / camera-work / soundtrack etc.