Taghato

First there was Amores Perros. Then Crash copied the same blue print and now the Iranian film Taghato (Crossroads) follows suit. The setup for all these films is a car crash which affects a group of people. Here we have a couple of vagabond youths on a joyride causing a fatal car accident which affects the lives of several people. These include a single father raising a teenage daughter who is drifting further and further from him, a recently married pregnant woman, a widowed female doctor raising a son and romantically involved with a male colleague, etc. Although Taghato is by no means an original concept, it is very watchable and quite entertaining thanks to a first rate cast, very competent direction, and a decent script which highlights many of the social problems in Iran, specially those affecting its youth and also neatly connects the lives of the various people involved in the crash together. Special mention should go to Bahram Radan, playing one of the vagrant youths, and Fatemeh Motamed Aria, playing a single mother. Worth watching.