I had the misfortune of seeing this movie at a festival a few months ago. I could not last til the end, but the amount of time I did spend in the theater was by far the worst movie-going experience I've ever had.
I'll start with the good: the cinematography is quite good, in a 'music video' kind of way.
Everything else is quite horrid: the characters are caricatures with absolutely no dimension, there is very little meaningful dialogue (perhaps partly due to the fact that most of the actors can't speak farsi well, even though they play people who are supposedly living in Iran), the story is an absurdly exaggerated portrayal of the way of life in Iran, and the acting is agonizingly bad.
I would not have been so disgusted if it wasn't so obvious that the director was just using a taboo subject (homosexuality), coupling it with a controversial locale (Iran) in order to exploit people into watching the movie (especially western audiences and festivals). A lot of times foreign audiences and those not familiar with the language tend to confuse bad acting with differences in culture. If you can't understand a word of farsi, then you might bear watching this til the end, otherwise there's slim chance.
I would not recommend this movie to anyone. Another friend of mine recently watched it (despite my stern warnings) and here's what he had to say:
Alright boys. I saw it. we still had our tickets from friday night and we decided to see how bad this movie was. We only lasted the first 20 minutes then we walked out. All we needed was the random dance scene in the court yard to blow our brains out - not in a good way - and we left. The acting and lack of dialog makes this movie unbearable. I have no idea why this got mixed reviews. Did the people who gave this movie a good review saw the same movie? What she was thinking? My guess is she wanted to make an art-house movie having every shot subliminally mean something. But she ended up making a b-movie that at best is just pure, stinking, rotting for days, pile of shit. Pendar Jaan, now i know why you took a break from your honeymoon to persistently stop us from seeing it. You're a good man.
p.s. the movie is shot in Beirut
followed VERY CLOSELY by God Father.
