It’s hard to imagine that you could go from loving a person deeply to loathing their guts and wanting them dead within a matter of seconds. Yet that sorry notion sits at the core of the new film from Iranian writer/director Saeed Roustaee in which friends, family members and lovers suddenly find their various relationship statuses flip-reversed as a result of a series of tragic and unpredictable events.
Though the film draws on the lives and experiences of a wide ensemble of players, though at the centre of it all is Parinaz Izadyar’s widowed nurse Mahnaz, bringing up her two kids with the help of sister Mehri (Soha Niast) while also attempting to bring back some familial stability by courting the dashing and witty paramedic Hamid (Payman Maadi).
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One big curveball in her life is that her son, Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi), is, to quote The Life of Brian, a very naughty boy, and when he’s not manipulating family members out of doing chores, he’s scampering across rooftops and involved in a schoolboy gambling circle. He’s exactly like Jean-Pierre Léaud in The 400 Blows, a charming, mature-beyond-his-years scamp who always pushes things just a tad too far.
Mahnaz adores him even though her demands and protestations never penetrate his psyche, but she needs to ship him and little sis Neda (Arshida Dorostkar) off to their father-in-laws for a bit while she does a little bit of manipulating of her own; specifically, making it seem as if she only has one child from her previous marriage when Hamid’s parents come to discuss possible wedding plans.
Yet this innocent scheme goes wrong on every conceivable level, leaving relationships in tatters and even bodies in the ground. Though Mahnaz saddles some of the blame for the fallout, her guilt quickly transforms into rage and her life duly becomes dedicated to taking down all those she perceives to have wronged her, including her son’s schoolmaster who she believes is the cause for his erratic behaviour.
Roustaee weaves this complex family web with artful rigour and skill, and his film makes a satisfying transition from a coolly-observed family portrait to a knuckle-gnawing soap opera at around the half-way point. Indeed, there’s a point where it feels as if the story here may even be a little too eventful, as by the time a character has been able to square their emotions away, another big twist is making itself felt on the horizon.
Where the film excels, however, is in its refusal to paint Mahnaz as the lovable heroine, even if she suffers the lion’s share of the indignities. Niast’s impressive, expressive performance never allows us to pity this set-upon matriarch, even as she refuses to give an inch to those who have suddenly become the enemies that she must conquer. The film is shot and edited with stylish reserve, and even makes time for the odd visual flourish, most notably via a bird’s eye shot of the courtyard beneath the family apartment where so many key interactions take place.
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