Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Country: Iran
Originally dated from 2006, “Fireworks Wednesday”, is a not-so-known major accomplishment from the celebrated filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi, one of the most acclaimed voices of the Iranian cinema. The Film Forum in New York recently retrieved his third feature, which was already revealing the filmmaker’s keen propensity for realism, as well as his capacity to devise potent family dramas that never feel vulgar and instantly occupy your eyes and mind with its deeply eloquent and susceptible environments.
The film, set in the contemporary Tehran on the Persian New Year, is an honest examination of marriage and infidelity in the very particular society where it takes place.
The central character is Rouhi (Taraneh Alidoosti), a young woman who works for a cleaning agency and is about to get married to a man who’s crazy for her.
One day she’s assigned to clean the apartment of a married couple that is living an intractable marital crisis. The constant arguments between Mojdeh (Hediyeh Tehrani) and Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) are reflected in their apartment whose windows were broken the night before and where everything is placed upside down. The couple’s son, Amir Ali (Matin Heydarnia), is pretty compelling in showing the affliction derived from the distress of witnessing the state of disaffection that his parents fell into. Gradually, Rouhi starts to understand the anguish of Mojdeh who has reasons to believe that her husband is having an affair with the woman next door, Simin (Pantea Bahram), an independent mother who turned her apartment into a clandestine hair salon.
Confused, Rouhi is caught in the middle of the gossips and, by turns, is used by both wife and husband in their desperate schemes.
I don’t have enough laudable words to describe the magnificent performances, authentic dramatic acting lessons for the ones interested in learning the plainness of the art.
The camerawork is another glorious achievement by Mr. Farhadi who cohesively weaves the little fragments that seamlessly express the whole without wasting one single minute of our time. Every scene is meaningful and is there for a reason, allowing us to apprehend the story effortlessly.
Thoroughly absorbing, “Fireworks Wednesday” is anchored in the truthfulness of many men-women relationships. It's a powerful storytelling put up with brilliancy.
