A Respectable Family by Massoud Bakhshi

There are enough elements in Massoud Bakhshi’s debut feature to satisfy fans of Iranian cinema eager to see their expectations confirmed on the big screen. A college professor returns to Iran after 22 years spent in Paris where aside the proverbial Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité he has also learnt how to dress like a western intellectual. A punchy opening sequence secures the spectators’ attention that for the first half of the movie tends to falter due to an initially enigmatic plot. Our man boards a taxi in Tehran only to be dragged out of it and be savagely beaten by what cunning European audiences knows are probably representatives of the Iranian authorities. We later discover that the exiled professor is having problems obtaining his passport back after having taught controversial history lessons in the city of Shiraz. It is a pity that the film itself does not deliver an equally challenging version of the facts that have shaped Iranian society after the 1979 revolution overthrew the medieval rule of the Shia and upset his criminal allies. Skilfully mixing social commentary with a thriller-like narrative, Bakhshi ambitiously, yet not always successfully, tells the story of a fractured family traversed by the tumultuous backdrop of the Iran-Iraq war. The latter, generously supported by a democratic western world on Saddam Hussein’s side, never seems to find its rightful place in a film that clearly revolves around it. The familial story of greed and corruption (of men) clashing with the immaculate kindness (of women and the western-educated son) is convincingly told while struggling to meaningfully connect with its wider historical context. What divided this family is in fact the universal rule of money, whereby human relations are to be sacrificed on the altar of profit, which obviously does not exclusively apply to war-torn Iran too. Bakhshi’s film ends up mirroring the familial fracture it describes, on the one had an enticingly crafted story of secrets and betrayals, on the other, an historical drama aimlessly looking for contextual relevance.

by Giovanni Vimercati (Celluloid Liberation Front)