Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2015 (IFFR). Remarkable and strange plot (for us Western Europeans, that is) but it offers ample opportunities for an insightful story about rules and customs in a country like Iran we cannot easily understand from our comfy chair. Each time we see a movie from Iran we learn more about their way-of-life, and this movie adds to the collection. An advantage of film festivals like IFFR is that they offer several such windows on cultures far away ("far" in more than one sense of the word).
In spite of the overall logically flowing narrative, a lot of things we had to outguess from what we saw and heard. As such we certainly missed some of the implicit social commentary. Yet, we got sufficient information to grasp what it was all about, in particular which things are organized differently from what we Europeans are used to. The role of the head nurse was a nice find to enlighten us on some of the important issues, and we were educated without us noticing it. Her driving force (ditto the parking guard to a lesser extent) are to maintain an orderly household. Such people don't think lightly of bending the rules, but they can (a bit) if they really want to.
A counter force in the story is taxi driver Youness. He does not talk much, to say it mildly, but acts when he feels that his heart or mood dictates such. He is outspoken on rare moments, however, like in the beginning when he throws a lawyer out of his car after hearing him say some unethical things on the phone. His silence may well be a form of coping behavior from the past.
One thing nearly escaped me about a rule that seemed to exist. When a taxi driver drops a pregnant woman at a hospital, he can leave and won't be held responsible for her and the baby. But by coming back, Youness implicitly made a formal commitment, and the fingerprints he left on several paper forms are legally binding in Iran. We are not sure he knew that, but either way the mere fact that he returned and stayed around surely made a statement. I'm in doubt about the legal issues and I'm certainly not a lawyer, but merely construed the legal aspects from what I saw and heard.
Anyway, this movie shows Iran as a civilized country and far from retarded in the technical sense. Their customs and laws may look like legacy from ancient times in our eyes, but that is another story altogether. The hospital itself did not have the latest and greatest gadgets, as we saw illustrated in the form of sub-standard plumbing in action. But that was explained very well, because of the larger part of their budget being devoted to a new building. That left little money for infrastructure and medical devices, though their doctors were good (as we were told several times). The sorry state of the hospital was demonstrated by a door-sign stating that complex patients were better off in other hospitals and were advised to look elsewhere.
All in all, very well written script, highlighting many points the film wants to make. The main protagonists, Youness and Sedighe (and the head nurse), carry their roles perfectly as per the intentions I assume the film makers had. It is social commentary, packaged in an attractive format, allowing us to observe local laws and conventions from a safe distance. It is a nice addition to what we read about Iran in the newspapers, the latter focusing on world politics like uranium enrichment factories and economic sanctions, but telling us little about the people who live there.
