GermanFilms22May_Screen_107x304 27.04.12 08:40 Seite 1
NEW GERMAN FILMS IN CANNES 2012
TUESDAY, 22 MAY …………………………….................... 11:30 h
Riviera 4 Oliver Dieckmann
ALS DER WEIHNACHTSMANN
VOM HIMMEL FIEL WHEN SANTA FELL TO EARTH 106 min
…………………………....................… 13:30 h
Arcades 3 Doris Dörrie
GLÜCK BLISS 112 min
A Respectable Family Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan
A college professor returns to Iran after 22 years in Massoud Bakhshi’s striking feature debut, A Respectable Family (Yek Khanevadeh-e Mohtaram), which deftly blends suspense and social commentary to deliver an acerbic commentary on today’s Tehran. Bakhshi’s invigorating and accessible drama is a doubtless performer for Pyramide International, and should turn festival exposure into solid arthouse business. Born in 1972 in Tehran, Bakhshi’s more modern perspec-
tive on his homeland breathes new life into Iranian cinema, and he uses his own teenage memories of the traumatic eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s as the haunting basis for A Respectable Family. Mixing some surprising thriller ele- ments into the plot mid-way through, he nonetheless holds a steady gaze on the mean streets of today’s Tehran and examines what has gone into creating them. It is a secular approach that should help entice some younger audiences, while there is still enough of substance here to satisfy fans of earlier Iranian arthouse. Bakhshi knows how to tease out his story as well; open-
ing, handheld shots from a first-person point of view take the viewer on a night-time taxi drive through Tehran before the unidentified occupant is beaten and dragged out by thugs. The director then moves to the bright and airy city of Shiraz, where Arash (Hamidian) has been lecturing for a semester at the university. An exile in Paris since the age of 15, he has been enticed back to Iran for reasons that initially remain unclear, but now he cannot get his passport back to leave the country. Meanwhile, a lawyer from Tehran arrives to tell Arash and his mother that the estranged and ailing family patriarch is making a secret bequest of billions of tomans (Iran’s official currency) to both, though they ini- tially refuse to sign the documents. Bakhshi forces the viewer into the game by playing out A
Respectable Family like a narrative hide-and-seek. Soon, Arash’s taxi-driving nephew, Hamed (Sedighian), arrives on the scene in Shiraz. Hamed is also estranged from his father Jafar (Ahmadi), Arash’s thuggish half-brother. Bakhshi mixes war footage with airy shots of modern
Tehran under construction and the oligarchs-in-waiting who occupy these gleaming citadels. Religion is always there, but the director uses it as a benign backdrop to the modern-day scourge of Iran and the region: corruption and profiteering. But it is Bakhshi’s screenplay and its deft execution that
are the stars of A Respectable Family, whether it be in domes- tic sequences with Arash, his mother and his step-family, or the moving memories of his brother’s funeral. Confronting the country’s grim past with images of a present, shiny Tehran, Bakhshi uses his own past to demonstrate the threat to a whole new generation.
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT
Iran-Fr. 2012. 90mins Director/screenplay Massoud Bakhshi Production companies Firoozei Films, JBA Production International sales PyramideInternational,
www.pyramidefilms.com Producers Mohammad Afarideh, Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin Cinematography Mahdi Jafari Editor JacquesComets Main cast Babak Hamidian, Mehrdad Sedighian, Ahoo Kheradmand, Mehran Ahmadi, ParivashNazarieh
GERMAN PAVILION · #124 · INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE phone +33-(0)4-92590180 · fax +33-(0)4-92590181
n 18 Screen International at Cannes May 22, 2012
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