--- title: "The Past" year: 2013 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-past" fi1m_score: 72 critics_score: 65 critics_reviews: 20 published: "2026-09-17T12:23:24.661323+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:23:24.946719+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Past (2013) Directed by Asghar Farhadi · 2h 10m · MPA PG-13 · Drama, Mystery **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics 65 from 20 reviews *In a sentence:* Nobody in this house is lying, exactly; they are simply taking turns with the truth > Asghar Farhadi moves to Paris and brings his habit of letting every character be right. The acting is superb and the house is a marvel of clutter, but the last half hour keeps producing revelations until the drama becomes a deposition. ## Synopsis Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) flies from Tehran to Paris to sign the papers that will end his marriage to Marie (Bérénice Bejo). She meets him at the airport but has not booked the hotel he asked for, so he stays in her half-painted house in the suburbs, alongside her two daughters, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) and Léa (Jeanne Jestin), and a small boy, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), who is not hers. Fouad belongs to Samir (Tahar Rahim), who runs a dry cleaner’s, whose wife lies in a coma, and whom Marie intends to marry. Lucie will not speak to Samir and stays out until the small hours. Marie wants Ahmad, whom the teenager still trusts, to find out why. ## Review Asghar Farhadi’s first film made outside Iran, after [*A Separation*](https://film.one/film/a-separation) (2011), begins with a man and a woman at an airport, talking through a glass partition, and we cannot hear a word. It is a fair warning. *The Past* is a film about people who have spent years half-hearing each other, and for its first ninety minutes it is as good as anything Farhadi has made. Then the plot starts to answer questions, one after another, and the film is a little less good with each answer. It is still worth your evening. The house is the star. Claude Lenoir has built Marie’s place as a home that has never quite been finished: sheets over the furniture, one wall done and the next one not, a spare room that has quietly become a child’s, a kitchen where every conversation happens because it is the only room with chairs. Mahmoud Kalari shoots it close and handheld, in doorways and corridors, so that somebody is always in the way of somebody else. When he pulls back, it is to put a pane of glass between people: the airport, a windscreen in the rain, the steamed-up front of Samir’s shop. Nobody in this film ever gets a clear line of sight to anyone. Bérénice Bejo plays Marie as a woman who snaps, apologises, and snaps again inside a single sentence. She smokes on the doorstep, she loses her temper with the wrong child, and she is, plainly, exhausted from being the only adult who stayed. It is a performance without vanity. Ali Mosaffa’s Ahmad has the calm of a man who knows he can leave on Sunday, and Mosaffa lets us see that the calm is a kind of luck rather than a virtue. Tahar Rahim, as Samir, says less than either of them and is watched by everyone; he has the stillness of a man waiting for a phone call from a hospital. The children are the film’s best idea. Pauline Burlet’s Lucie is sullen in the way only a sixteen-year-old with a real grievance can be, and the scene in which Ahmad finally gets her talking, walking beside her rather than sitting opposite, is the most patient stretch of writing in the film. Elyes Aguis’s Fouad is small, furious and homesick for a house that no longer works, and the moment that got at us most was a simple one: the boy in the back of a car at night, howling to be taken home, while the two men in the front seats say nothing because there is nothing to say. We were more upset by that than by any of the adult confessions that follow. Juliette Welfling cuts the arguments with a good ear for when to leave. She lets a kitchen row run long enough to hurt and then goes to the next room, where a child has heard all of it. Evgueni Galperine and Youli Galperine’s music is withheld almost entirely until the final minutes, which is the right decision; the film’s sound is doors, rain, a kettle and raised voices, and it does not need help. The trouble is the mystery. Farhadi wants to know why Samir’s wife did what she did, and so does everyone in the house, and in the last forty minutes each of them produces a new piece of the story. A chain of confessions begins, each one shifting the blame a link along, and by the fourth we had stopped feeling anything and started keeping score. Marie’s reasons for wanting Ahmad under her roof at all never quite hold either, and the film’s habit of casting him as the reasonable man in the doorway while she shouts in the kitchen is a pattern it notices but does not entirely escape. *A Separation* had one lie and let the consequences spread through a whole city. *About Elly* (2009) had one absence. *The Past* has three or four secrets and has to explain every one of them, and explaining is the thing Farhadi does least well. What he does best, the way a family talks over itself at dinner, the way a child hears more than anyone intends, is all here, and it is a pleasure to watch even while the plot is tidying up behind it. See it with someone you have argued with. It runs 130 minutes and carries a 12A, and nothing in it will alarm a twelve-year-old except the sight of adults behaving like this. *Fi1m score 72, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come away admiring The Past, though few love it without reservation. The praise gathers around Farhadi’s handling of actors, and around Bérénice Bejo in particular, whose performance as a woman pulled at from every side is singled out again and again. Reviewers also credit the density of the family drama: the shared history, the secrets, the way the script sets out guilt and responsibility without taking sides. The reservations are almost all about plot. Many find the late revelations contrived, the third act too eager to explain itself and the pacing slack in the second half. A Separation hangs over nearly every review, and most think this film the lesser of the two. The spread is wide. The AV Club regards it as a major achievement, while Sight and Sound and Time Out find it disappointing and heavy-handed, and Anthony Lane in The New Yorker finds its mix of chaos and gloom hard to endure. ### Reviews we read (20) - **The AV Club**, Mike D'Angelo (A): Hails it as a magnificent achievement and painfully precise disquisition on human messiness, dense with shared history, though noting some bluntness and similarity to A Separation. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/cannes-2013-day-two-iranian-director-asghar-farhadi-c-1798238165) - **Little White Lies**, David Jenkins (4/4/4): The critic praises Farhadi as a great humanist who builds credible characters with complex motivations, highlighting the film's immaculate study of marital disharmony and emotional ripple effects. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-past) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (4/5): Farhadi confirms his place among cinema's true grown-ups with a pressure cooker of a relationship drama that is a tragedy of good intentions and wrong decisions. The critic singles out the film's severity and cerebral force, along with its intricate analysis of the agony of splitting in a loss-of-love triangle. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/27/the-past-review-peter-bradshaw-asghar-farhadi) - **Screen Daily** (75/100, inferred): Delivers another gripping, densely plotted drama of ethics, love and loyalty; confirms Farhadi as superb director of actors, but less resonant than A Separation. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/the-past/5056283.article) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (70/100, inferred): Farhadi has a passion for drama and a gift for realistic depiction of intense emotional situations, making “The Past” quite potent on its own terms as part family melodrama and part intricate interpersonal puzzle. A plot heavy with contrivances works due to the forceful direction and excellent cast, led by a convincing Bérénice Bejo. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2013-dec-19-la-et-mn-the-past-20131220-story.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Jordan Cronk (70/100, inferred): Notes the film's complex narrative and strong sense of interior space as a stirring, impressively acted piece that extends Farhadi’s streak, though it strains toward melodrama at times. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/cannes-film-festival-2013-the-past-review/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, THR Staff (70/100, inferred): Praises the nearly flawless screenplay that explores guilt and responsibility without taking sides, along with strong performances especially from Bérénice Bejo, in a low-key, superbly lensed family drama. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/past-cannes-review-524560/) - **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (70/100, inferred): The film is a family melodrama and relationship story about love, loyalty, secrets and how the past haunts the present. Farhadi demonstrates a masterly gift for domestic drama through fluid filmmaking and strong performances, especially Bérénice Bejo’s thorny, layered one. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/movies/the-past-with-berenice-bejo-directed-by-asghar-farhadi.html) - **Variety**, Justin Chang (70/100, inferred): This is an exquisitely sculpted family melodrama with microscopic attention to character, performance and theme that maintains a powerful, authentically acted portrait of human truths. Farhadi’s sense of narrative construction can be almost too incisive, costing some focus and credibility in the final reels, with one mystery distractingly over-contrived. [Read](https://variety.com/2013/film/global/cannes-film-review-the-past-1200482880/) - **Total Film**, Andrew Lowry (55/100, inferred): Farhadi's follow-up to A Separation moves the story to France but struggles with its plot of divorce and secrets, coming close to perpetuating rational man/hysterical woman stereotypes. Bérénice Bejo's devastating performance as the serial monogamist mother saves the film despite the arthouse trappings and silly late twists. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-past-review/) - **Sight and Sound**, Geoff Andrew (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film disappointing compared to A Separation, with contrived revelations, narrative clumsiness, and less resonance, though it has solid performances and assured mise en scène. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/news/tough-acts-follow-past-stranger-lake) - **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (40/100, inferred): The film is intricate and mature but meandering, heavy-handed, and melodramatic; it lacks the tight control of A Separation and feels disappointing and underwhelming. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-past) - **Vulture**, David Edelstein (40/100, inferred): Finds the first half absorbing as an evocatively photographed soap opera but criticizes the later sluggish pacing, clunky twists, and imposed sense of hopelessness. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2013/12/the-past-movie-review-asghar-farhdi.html) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (30/100, inferred): The director’s gift for pulling viewers deep into the story and conveying the burdens of minor lives remains unimpaired, though the Parisian setting feels more familiar and some symbolic choices seem calculated. The tangle of relationships grows knotted and the blend of chaos and gloom can feel hard to endure. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-past-2) - **HeyUGuys**, Lisa Giles-Keddie (5/5): The film is an intense emotional drama about the remnants of divorce and family fallout, woven with a crime mystery element. It praises the claustrophobic family setting, standout performances especially from Bérénice Bejo, and Farhadi's script and direction as awards-contender material. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-past-review/) - **Eye for Film**, Richard Mowe (80/100, inferred): Farhadi's first French film explores murky family territory with themes of the past gripping the present, through heart-rending confrontations and understated beauty. It singles out Bérénice Bejo's tour de force performance as the woman torn apart from all sides. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-past-2013-film-review-by-richard-mowe) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (B): The film is a mature, complex and impressive melodrama with an intricately layered script and excellent performances, particularly from Bérénice Bejo. It complains that the third act slightly fumbles by providing too many answers and shifting to a more procedural tone. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-asghar-farhadis-mature-complex-impressive-the-past-starring-berenice-bejo-tahar-rahim-20131219/) - **The Wrap**, Ella Taylor (70/100, inferred): The critic finds that Farhadi's excessive plotting distracts from his sharp observations of daily life and domestic relationships. She singles out his concrete depiction of the ebb and flow of imperfect information in family settings for praise. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/past-review-iranian-filmmaker-explores-divorce-european-style/) - **Digital Spy**, Stella Papamichael (3/5): The critic finds Farhadi's domestic drama compelling in its character web and performances despite flaws in plotting and character motivations. Revelations become overly melodramatic and the central relationship insufficiently convincing. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a556599/the-past-review-brnice-bejo-leads-asghar-farhadis-brooding-drama/) - **Paste**, Christine N. Ziemba (7.9): The film explores the messiness of divorce and relationships transcending cultural boundaries through nuanced performances and subjective truths. It excels in character depth but suffers from overly meticulous pacing and excessive length. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-past-1) ## Details - **Director:** Asghar Farhadi - **Director:** Asghar Farhadi - **Writer:** Asghar Farhadi - **Cinematography:** Mahmoud Kalari - **Editor:** Juliette Welfling - **Music:** Youli Galperine, Evgueni Galperine - **Production design:** Claude Lenoir - **Costume design:** Jean-Daniel Vuillermoz - **Producer:** Alexandre Mallet-Guy - **Cast:** Bérénice Bejo as Marie Brisson; Ali Mosaffa as Ahmad; Tahar Rahim as Samir; Pauline Burlet as Lucie; Elyes Aguis as Fouad; Jeanne Jestin as Léa; Sabrina Ouazani as Naïma; Babak Karimi as Shahryar - **Runtime:** 2h 10m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 19 December 2013 - **Genres:** Drama, Mystery - **Budget:** $11 million - **Box office:** $11 million ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, EE, FR, GB, HU, IE, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NZ, PA, TR, UA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - César Award for Best Actress 2014: César Award for Best Actress (nominated) - International Submission to the Academy Awards 2014: International Submission to the Academy Awards (nominated) ## If you liked this - *A Separation* (2011), Fi1m 93: Farhadi’s tighter film: one lie, one Tehran flat, and consequences that will not stop. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-separation.md) - *Scenes from a Marriage* (1973): Bergman lets a couple talk for six hours and none of it is wasted. - *Secrets & Lies* (1996), Fi1m 88: Mike Leigh’s family secret comes out over a barbecue; nobody escapes the garden unchanged. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/secrets-and-lies.md) - *Still Walking* (2008): Kore-eda’s one day with a grieving family, all kitchens and things left unsaid. - *Force Majeure* (2014), Fi1m 84: A husband runs the wrong way for two seconds and a marriage spends a week paying. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/force-majeure.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-past