The Salesman (2016)

Academy Awards, USA 2017

Winner Oscar

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Iran

Amazon Studios
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Cohen Media Group)

A man returns to his apartment to find his wife bloody in the bathroom shower. She unknowingly let a man in with the buzzer, thinking it was her husband. She survives, but it is unclear exactly what happened, especially whether or not she was raped. They do not report it to the police because she is too embarrassed. So instead, he follows up clues to find the assailant. A pickup truck leads him to a bakery where it is used for deliveries, with access by multiple people, but concludes that one young driver has been using the truck. He talks the man into coming to his former apartment in an abandoned building where he plans to confront him, but his older father-in-law comes instead. Much to his surprise, the elderly man with a heart condition ends up being the attacker. Barely restraining himself, he locks the man in a room and calls his wife and son, planning to humiliate him in front of his family with a forced confession. It does not go as planned. Entertaining, if far-fetched, Iranian film examining themes of reality and illusion, much like the play Death of a Salesman in which the husband and wife are appearing as actors during the events of the film.