Leila's Brothers (2022, Saeed Roustaee) (Patreon)

48/100

Reminiscent of Farhadi (and features two of his favorite actors, Taraneh "the Elly whom About Elly is nominally about" Alidoosti and Peyman "single greatest performance of the previous decade" Moaadi), but lacks the crucial sense of inexorability. Indeed, the most interesting element here arrives out of nowhere, both for the characters and—because we're never told precisely when the film takes place; turns out to be 2018—for us: A late financial crisis is precipitated by Trump withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal, which torches the exchange rate for gold overnight. ("Yesterday, a coin cost six," one dealer tells the kids. "After Trump's speech, it went up to seven. After his tweet, eight.") But it's typical of Roustaee's sprawling screenplay that this ultimately feels irrelevant. Manouchehr has to flee the country, but he willingly got involved in a blatant pyramid scheme; had that not blown up in his face, something else would have. Same with all the melodrama involved in purchasing the shop, which in theory raises thorny questions about whether adult children of gullible, foolish elders should let their inheritance be effectively stolen by con men (actual scenario's not nearly that simple), but plays out in a way that just mechanistically has every family member make the worst possible decision at each inflection point. Structure's abysmal, too—Roustaee spends the first 15 minutes pointlessly cross-cutting among laborious patriarch negotiations (a matter that then gets backburnered for like an hour), Alireza ducking labor unrest after he's laid off (not very important in the grand scheme), and Leila I think getting treated for her bad back? Anyway, it's a lengthy prologue that utterly fails to draw you in, even if Dad's desire to be patriarch eventually fuels the narrative motor. Once we finally meet all five kids, a credible family dynamic does form; whole cast is strong (I barely recognize Moaadi as this carefree beardless man-bunned asshole), and many individual scenes work quite well. But the movie as a whole, running nearly three hours, becomes a grueling anti-fluid succession of disparate overheated conflicts, ending on a note that's less culmination than adherence to a cinematic Do Not Resuscitate order. I kept rooting for it, it kept disappointing me. But I can at least see why Fremaux thought something so ambitious belonged in Competition, which was decidedly not the case with, say, Boy From Heaven aka Cairo Conspiracy.