My last stop on SIFF train this year was at another Iranian film, به آهستگی (Gradually) by Maziar Miri casting Mohammad Reza Forutan of much fame in Iran. And I should say, I am sad that I finished the festival full of such great films on such a low note.

In Gradually, Mohmoud learns that his mentally unstable wife has gone missing, so he leaves his factory job and goes to Tehran to find her. When he arrives home the entire neighborhood has different accounts of her whereabouts. A runaway wife is a terrible humiliation, but gradually he understands the underlying circumstances.

The main point the film was trying to covey was the pressure put on the young generation in Iran by what the society thinks of them. However, the film lacked a coherent storyline and it was really hard to make sense of the scenes even for native Farsi speakers, let alone those enjoying the dialog through the poorly done subtitles.

This film has one (at most two) essential characters and the least the director could have done was to devote sometime to define their characters. I don’t think anybody in the audience could say they understood the lead role(s) of the film. And the ending was so bizarre. I truly believe this film should have been cut so badly due to censorship pressures otherwise I cannot tell what they could have been thinking. Mr. Miri please tell me you had to cut the good parts out because somebody forced you.

Bottom line this was an awful film. After seeing the film, a friend of mine contended that Iran won’t be on his short list of vacation destinations or future indie films! Now, that’s some good anti-tourism promotion for a country, isn’t it?

On Tuesday, I watched ماهی ها آشق می شوند (The Fish Fall in Love), the only Iranian film that I have chosen to see in this year’s festival (out of the four). And I sure am glad I chose this one. The film is about a man, Aziz, returning to his hometown for the first time in 25 years, who finds that his former family home is now a thriving restaurant run by four spirited, independent women, one of whom is a former lover.

Through the film the director creates a very good balance between unfolding what has happened in the past and what is transpiring right now all while creating parallels between the lives of a mother and daughter. I thought the timeline play was very clever.

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