You cannot watch the film without feeling kinship with the characters and admitting their decency as well as their mistakes.

Dynamically shot and paced like a thriller, the film has the density and moral prickliness of a good novel.

Nothing earth-shattering happens in A Separation, but the straightforwardness of this view of a disintegrating marriage, set in the context of complicated cultural and religious mors, is dramatic by itself.

Equally important is that the film avoids oversimplistic condemnations of the Iranian regime, showing that oppression can be propagated unconsciously, even by those who are at the bottom of society.