THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
We summarize the operations. July 28, 2021: we discover in France, relatively amazed, Tehran Lawwild thriller, documented and irreverent on drug trafficking in Iran, and at the same time its young author, Saeed Roustaee, author of a first feature film in 2016 (Life and a Day), who tells us about the incredible obstacle course he had to deal with to make his new film. Notwithstanding censorship (Tehran Law was banned in Iran), the work miraculously exists (nothing would be less certain today, where the authorities are tightening their repressive arsenal against filmmakers) and suddenly makes us see in passing a sociopolitical state of the country that ‘we were miles away from suspecting.
That is to say if, a year later, the announcement of Leila and her brothers in competition at Cannes, followed today by its theatrical release, threw moviegoers into excitement. Without removing the least in the world the esteem we have for Roustaee, we must admit that this new opus is a little disillusioning. The expectation of a renewal of the operations of the previous film, in all that they had of raw and dantesque, will undoubtedly have powerfully contributed to this feeling. Because it is more on the side of a small theater of family cruelty and a consummate art of the moral dilemma à la Asghar Farhadi that Roustaee takes us this time.
A tragicomedy
The actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who interprets the main role of this film, comes from the cinema of Farhadi – strong sign. Here she camps Leila, the forty-something daughter of a modest couple who led the household with her help, and sister of four brothers who are trying hard, each in their own way, to get by. For this reason, Leila thinks that the time has come to take advantage of the sacrifices made, and at the same time to emancipate herself from the home. She therefore proposes to her brothers to seize an opportunity by uniting to buy in a gallery a modest commercial premises that they could exploit together. By adding up everyone’s meager savings, and asking the parents to advance the rest, she hopes to draw her card from the game.
This is where the shoe pinches. Because during this time, the paterfamilias, a tyrannical little man camped on his right, squandered all the resources of the home to respond favorably to the proposal to become the godfather of the family clan, an honorary but expensive task. This false honor bestowed on him by a family that in truth has always despised him enrages Leila, no less than the right that the old man wants to assume to distract the heritage of his own children.
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