Leila Hatami uses small changes of expression to make domestic frustration felt. We value her restraint most when it allows for stubbornness as well as hurt; in A Separation, she makes taking sides difficult.
Fi1m perspective
Leila Hatami can stay quiet without making the woman she plays seem passive. She uses glances and silences to let feeling build, so that an outburst has something behind it. In A Separation (2011), her Simin has enough force to make the quarrels with Payman Maadi's Nader feel like arguments between people who have lived together. We found their marriage upsetting to watch because both actors make it seem substantial enough for its unravelling to hurt.
Her adult film career began with the title role in Dariush Mehrjui's Leila (1997), and domestic drama has remained central to her work. Through the 2000s she worked steadily in Iranian cinema, frequently playing educated or middle-class women under family pressure. The Deserted Station (2002) offered another quiet, introspective story. The international attention that came with A Separation recognised an actor whose restrained way of showing distress was already well established.
Asghar Farhadi gets particularly good work from her because Simin need not win our approval to remain persuasive. Maadi makes Nader's certainty uncomfortable, and Hatami gives his wife equal force rather than treating her as the reasonable person provided for our convenience. We can understand why these two people are at odds without being invited to dismiss either of them. A few of the plot complications look carefully placed, but the performances keep the quarrels from feeling like exercises set by the writer. The film is worth returning to for the difficulty the actors create whenever we think we have settled on a side.
Hatami followed that film with the role of Leyli in Ali Mosaffa's The Last Step (2012), and has continued taking leads in domestic dramas. The reservation about her acting is that vulnerability can become a familiar habit, making different characters seem too close to the same wounded woman. That is a limit to watch for, not a reason to mistake restraint for a lack of force. Simin gives us little opportunity to make that mistake. For a first encounter, choose A Separation and allow time to argue about it afterwards.
Biography
Leila Hatami is an Iranian actress. She was born on 1 October 1972 in Tehran to director Ali Hatami and actress Zari Khoshkam. She appeared in small roles in her father's productions as a child, including the film Kamalolmolk (1984).
After secondary school she studied in Lausanne, Switzerland, first electronic engineering and then French literature at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. She returned to Iran and made her first leading film appearance in Leila (1997), directed by Dariush Mehrjui.
Hatami is known for her performance as Simin in A Separation (2011), for which she received the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival. She won the Montreal World Film Festival Award for Best Actress for The Deserted Station (2002). She is married to actor and director Ali Mosaffa.
