Reza (Alireza Motamedi) is perhaps one of the most interesting “first films” of Iranian Cinema in recent years; a very personal film which defines itself with wandering of its main male character at the uncertainty period of his life, after the end of an affair and before beginning it again (something like Antonioni’s Eclipse, without any similarity in style). The film has a certain balance with its sweet and bitter scenes, (distant from films with typical tragic intellectual characters, always nagging at their fate), and is funny and amusing, and at the same time has a certain balance with its narrations (the story that Reza reads for us), with its lyrical tone that make us respect this irresponsible and funny flirty man. Reza depicts his character’s contradictions and weaknesses and lies and fears, who really doesn’t know what he wants, but proceed in writing his story and at the very end, finishing it, which indicates he is really a good writer. The film with its brilliant set designing (by Keivan Moghaddam), its brilliant cinematography (by Ali Tabrizi), and its brilliant actors (almost all of them), has amazing funny and amusing atmosphere (interiors and exteriors), and represent a portrait of an intellectual who can laugh at everything and being surrounded by beautiful girls always make attention to him, and at the same time being so lonely. Unlike all unhappy intellectuals in other Iranian films, he is always content at every situation (his name means “content” in Persian), ideologically this is similar to the type of literature he likes most (old Persian mystic literature). But maybe this is also a kind of trick and the film actually is a kind of parody in this approach.
A Hero of Our Time \ Majid Eslami Review of “Reza”
