I would like to start a short review about this movie with a congratulations to Mr. Danesh. As a first-time director, I am really impressed to see how well his movie is. The whole scene in the bookstore was truly powerful. The movie took a a step back afterwards, but still a great place to start a directing career. A little more working on the character of Negar Javaherian would have made a big difference. I loved all the symbolic parts, although some of them could have been less straightforward to understand. I will be looking forward to seeing his next movies.
2 Reviews
a movie worth re-watching
andychrist276 December 2016
After seeing the international premiere of this in Tallinn, I had a feeling that in some ways this movie was too complicated to get all the details and nuances of the storyline on the first try.
Basically the story concentrates on two former musicians (the man is a pianist, the woman a violinist) who used to date in college but now are married to other people. They haven't seen each other for a long time, but a seemingly random encounter between them starts a chain of events which seems to spiral out of control.
The key of the story seems to be the violinist's husband (who emerges as the main character over the course of the film) who starts to dig in her wife's past and seems to be convinced she still harbors feelings towards the pianist. It's kind of hard to say if these doubts are justified or not, or is this man actually projecting his illusion on the reality, thereby changing his own life to the worse.
It must be said that I didn't find the first half of the movie particularly enjoyable as the story takes a while to get going and at first there's very little background presented to you about all those characters and their histories. In a Q+A session the director told of weeks of meetings with the actors where the main characters backstories and inter-relations were established. I have a feeling that in the end they were all so familiar with the story that they might have forgot the viewer does not share their knowledge and has to be brought in from the beginning. So in some aspects the script could have been written better. In the second half of the movie it all starts to come together though. It is definitely a movie which requires attention from the audience but also rewards them in the end.
Basically the story concentrates on two former musicians (the man is a pianist, the woman a violinist) who used to date in college but now are married to other people. They haven't seen each other for a long time, but a seemingly random encounter between them starts a chain of events which seems to spiral out of control.
The key of the story seems to be the violinist's husband (who emerges as the main character over the course of the film) who starts to dig in her wife's past and seems to be convinced she still harbors feelings towards the pianist. It's kind of hard to say if these doubts are justified or not, or is this man actually projecting his illusion on the reality, thereby changing his own life to the worse.
It must be said that I didn't find the first half of the movie particularly enjoyable as the story takes a while to get going and at first there's very little background presented to you about all those characters and their histories. In a Q+A session the director told of weeks of meetings with the actors where the main characters backstories and inter-relations were established. I have a feeling that in the end they were all so familiar with the story that they might have forgot the viewer does not share their knowledge and has to be brought in from the beginning. So in some aspects the script could have been written better. In the second half of the movie it all starts to come together though. It is definitely a movie which requires attention from the audience but also rewards them in the end.
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