Vahid Mobasseri
“IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT” My rating: B+ (Various PPV services)
103 minutes | MPAA” PG-13
Jafar Pantani’s “It Was Just an Accident” begins with a long (like, 10 minutes) uninterrupted shot of an Iranian family driving down the highway at night. At the wheel is Eghbal (Ibrahim Azizi), at his side his wife, and in the back seat his little daughter.
They hit and kill a dog (again, all in one long shot) and thereafter their vehicle starts acting up. They must pull over and ask for assistance.
So far it looks like the film is going to be about Eghbal and his family. Uh, no. Eghbal will spend most of the film off camera, drugged and locked in a tool chest in the van operated by Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), an almost comic bumbler with drooping mustache and basset hound eyes.
Vahid spent several months being tortured in an Irani prison for his part in an illegal labor strike. He was blindfolded most of the time, but the guard who regularly abused him had an artificial leg that squeaked…and Eghbal has an artificial leg that makes the same sound.
So the revenge-minded Vahid has kidnapped Eghbal and is rounding up some of his fellow former prisoners. If enough of them can identify his captive as their oppressor, Vahid plans on burying him alive.
One of these half-assed outlaws is a wedding photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari); she’s the voice of reason, working to keep her friends from doing something stupid. Hamid (Mohamed Ali Elyasmehr) and Golrokh (Hades Pakbaten) want revenge right now. (Golrokh was preparing for her marriage when she got sucked up in this misadventure…she goes through the entire film wearing her wedding dress, dragging along her befuddled fiance).
Here’s the problem. All of these folk are good people. They argue about the morality of what they’re doing; they wonder if they’re not embracing the same evil as the government thugs who made their lives miserable. And having spent time behind bars, they are not eager to return should this crazy caper goes south.
Beyond the compelling plotting and characters, “It Was Just an Accident” is a quiet condemnation of the Iraqi regime. I found myself wondering how a film this critical of the government ever got made.
Stellan Skarsgard, Renate Reinsve
“SENTIMENTAL VALUES” My Rating: B (Various PPV services)
133 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Films about fathers and sons are commonplace. Those about fathers and daughters, on the other hand, are few and far between.
Joachim Trier’s followup to his “The Worst Person in the World” is a testimonial to family love that survives all the travails we can throw at it.
It begins with a funny/scary sequence in which actress Nora Borg (“Worst Person’s” Renate Reinsve) undergoes a world class panic attack seconds before the opening night performance of the play in which she stars. She literally has to beg a co-worker to slap her silly to work up the determination to go on stage.
Nora’s carrying plenty of emotional baggage. Her mother has recently died and her father Gustave (Stellan Skarsgard) is a famous movie director who bailed on the family years ago. She has anger issues.
There’s a younger sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas),who as a child starred in one of her dad’s films but now concentrates on marriage, motherhood and her career as an historian. Having rejected show biz, she’s as close to normal as this clan gets.
Gustav (think Ingmar Bergman) wants to come out of retirement to make one last film, a self-referential bio-drama about his family, especially his mother who during the war defied the Nazis and ended up committing suicide. He wants Nora to take the leading role; she wants nothing to do with the old man and rejects this obvious peace offering. So Gustav has cajoled American movie star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) to take on the part.
The performances are strong all around, but especially in the case of Skarsgard and Reinsve, whose scenes together are a form of emotional jousting. It’s like a master class in subtle acting.
“Sentimental Values” is slim on plotting and there are no earthshaking revelations. But over its running time we see the characters incrementally shift their attitudes toward each other. This leaves the film’s title oozing irony…these people are about as far from sentimental as you can get, yet in the end they grudgingly accept each other despite their obvious egos, faults and foibles.
It’s what families do.
Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 