The
lesson of Brewster’s Millions may not
have reached Iran yet. As a result, a
well-to-do urban couple will have a difficult time giving away a trunk full of
cash in the hardscrabble north. Their
strange task comes with pre-set conditions and amounts, but their own personal
issues and resentments will make it even more difficult in Mani Haghighi’s Modest Reception (trailer here), which screens
today as part of the 2013 Global Lens collection premiering at MoMA.
The
young soldier instantly regrets pulling over the Lexus. An attractive woman and her somewhat older
but distinguished looking companion are having one of those embarrassing arguments,
in which they try to pull in innocent bystanders. Stunned and bewildered by their theatrics,
the guard finds himself holding a bag of cash as the two lunatics speed away,
laughing hysterically.
For
initially vague reasons, the man and woman are supposed to dispense four
million rial bags throughout the forbidding border region. The few remaining residents are instantly
skeptical of the noisy outsiders offering money for nothing. (Maybe they saw Irvin Kershner’s Flim Flam Man before the
revolution.) In a series of episodes,
Leyla and Kaveh construct a little drama to convince the stolid northerners to
take their cash, usually just to get the eccentric city folk out of their
hair. However, just when they have
apparently succeeded, one of the two benefactors invariably starts resenting
the hypocrisy or ingratitude of their recipients and starts playing cruel mind
games with them.
Beginning
in a farcical tone, Reception smoothly
segues into a rather dark and twisted absurdist territory. The audience comes to assume Leyla and Kaveh
have familial reasons for this exercise in madness, but it is hard to be one
hundred percent certain considering how many lies we have heard from them. Taraneh Alidoosti and Haghighi convincingly
suggest decades of history between the two leads, earning considerable laughs
and inducing a whole lot of wincing.
Reception is definitely a
dialogue-driven film, but international viewers can easily appreciate the
dynamic between the odd couple. After
all, phrases like “I told you so” and “I hope you’re happy now” translate quite
readily. However, the film’s
allegorical hints are more obscure. Like
the films of Asghar Farhadi (with whom Haghighi has often collaborated), Reception portrays Iran’s class divide
in unflinching terms. It might also raise
some eyebrows when Kaveh casually explains he only grabbed a bottle of
contraband liquor rather than the full crate because the potential punishment
if caught would only be a mere eighty lashes. Yet, beyond its pessimistic view of the human
condition, it is hard to read terribly much into their misadventures.
