We're drawn to movies from the Middle East and other far-flung locales because of their exotic nature, for their depiction of worlds that seem strange and which we might like to visit.

The shock of A SEPARATION, a justly celebrated drama from Iran about two families caught in a ruinous legal dispute, is that it feels so familiar, so much like our own reality that we cannot safely position it as "other".

The women wear chadors, the men have the final say and the Koran is the basis of religion, law and social convention. Yet these surface details melt away as the drama takes hold - and, goodness, does it take hold, with a vice-like grip that does not let up until the wrenching final moments - yanking our sympathies in one direction and then the opposite until we're left as shaken as the characters themselves.

Expertly built on Jean Renoir's famous dictum "everyone has their reasons", A SEPARATION has the kind of complexity rarely seen in mainstream English-language cinema.

Despite the head-spinning complexities of the story, it has a miraculous clarity and drive.
Since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival last February it has won every award in sight and is now in the running for the best foreign film and best screenplay Oscars (and thoroughly deserves to win both). It has stunned critics and audiences with its sophisticated depiction of middle-class life and the multiplicity of a family's relationships and entanglements with the rest of the world.

Farhadi's gut-wrenching masterpiece makes his country feel uncomfortably close to home. [EDITED]


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