Even though I didn’t think this film — which won the 2017 foreign film Oscar — from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is of the same calibre of his last few films that I saw (e.g. A Separation, The Past), it’s still quite impressive. Set in modern-day Iran, it’s a slow-paced but engaging story of how a young married couple’s relationship changes and is put to the test after the wife is assaulted at home by a stranger. There is a story within a story as the couple, actors in the same theatre company, are staging a Farsi language production of Death of a Salesman. To be honest, I didn’t fully appreciate the deeper meanings of the story-within-a-story, but you can appreciate the film even without a full understanding of that aspect. Terrific acting and pacing. (Subtitled.)
