Writer-director Saeed Roustaee, a rising star of Iranian cinema who has already hit critical and popular heights at home with his 2019 smash police drama Just 6.5, reaches the Cannes competition staircase with his third film, Leila’s Brothers (Baradarane Leila), an exquisitely acted and paced social drama that immerses the viewer in a rowdy, quarrelsome family fighting against their abject poverty for almost three hours, and still manages to keep it (largely) fascinating. Once again Roustaee dives deep into the ills of contemporary Iranian society without messaging or moralizing, putting his trust in dramatic storytelling of the epic proportions favored by Balzac and Victor Hugo. The downbeat theme and extended running time suggest a better festival run than a box office tally, though the Elle Driver release could build on audience interest in contemporary directors like Asghar Farhadi to get the ball rolling.
Headlining the film’s stand-out cast are several actors familiar to Iran-watchers: Taraneh Alidoosti (The Salesman) as Leila and the two stars of Just 6.5, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Payman Maadi, as two of her four brothers. Their personal and familial suffering is firmly tied to the economic crisis in Iran caused by international sanctions, and this is certainly one illustration of how the poor are the worst hit, while the rich get by on their gold reserves. In the real world, every day in Iran there are strikes and demonstrations protesting the soaring prices of food and gas. Leila’s Brothers captures the urgency of the crisis, in the same way that Just 6.5 forced viewers to acknowledge that drug abuse has gotten completely out of control.
The film opens on two intercut scenes, one focused on the individual suffering of Leila as she undergoes painful treatment for a chronic backache (a bit of a red herring, as it is barely mentioned in the rest of the film), the other on the economic disaster of an enormous factory shutting down. It is here that her brother Alireza (Mohammedzadeh), the only one with a real job, finds himself swept up in a fierce clash with armed security police as an army of unemployed workers revolts and fights for a year of back pay the factory owes them. The racing, swooping camera immerses us in a scene of vast panic and confusion, which ends with Alireza slinking away from the fracas as an angry co-worker brands him a coward. It’s a character flaw that often comes to the fore in this basically level-headed and decent man.
Alireza’s unemployment sends him back to his family home, a ramshackle maze of a house owned by his foolish 80-year-old father Esmail Jourablou (veteran stage actor Saed Poursamimi), a paragon of ornery stinginess. He keeps the tension high – at times comically so – and the family feud constant. Leila, who works outside the house but is unmarried at 40, is the most bitter towards the vain old man, whose only thought is to win the honorary position of patriarch in the Jourablou family clan, controlled by a wealthy but venal cousin. As the story develops, he shows he’s willing to turn over his savings of 40 gold coins to clinch the honor, thus relegating his sons and daughter to a lifetime of poverty.
The ensemble cast, all carefully individualized with warts and all, includes Payman Maadi from Farhadi’s A Separation, here playing a divorced man who lives precariously with a male “roommate” and is the black sheep of the family, and another of Roustaee’s regulars, Mohammad Ali Mohammadi, who is given too little screen time to show off more than his muscles and temper. The last brother, the very overweight and likable Farhad Aslani, is the father of five little girls and a newborn son. He also has a job: as the men’s room attendant in the shopping mall where Leila works. When he overhears the bosses talking about transforming the bathroom into eight small shops, Leila realizes their big chance has come to pool their savings and make a down payment on property that is sure to increase in value. The only thing she and her brothers don’t reckon on is a Trump tweet that sends the dollar shooting up and the Iranian rial sinking to the bottom.
The narrative threads are many and they do come a little loose as the story goes on and the multiple family dramas accumulate. Roustaee’s screenplay revolves around money in all its forms: gold coins, cash and foreign currency, continually returning to the father as the possessor of the family’s reserves and the key to his children’s exit from poverty.
Only Alireza poses the question of the old man’s right to dispose of his money as he likes. Navid Mohammadzadeh, who is the actor of the moment in Iran, gives one of his career-best performances here as a representative for all those who have lost their dignity and courage when they lost their livelihood. His emotional scenes smoking on the rooftop with Alidoosti, whose courage is always there but who lacks her brother’s respect for others, are a study in contrasting personalities between a brother and sister who care for each other.
The climactic scene arrives during a huge wedding in a fancy hotel, in an extraordinary moment of triumph for the old man that swiftly turns to disaster. The film’s big set piece, it is beautifully introduced and choreographed by Hooman Behmanesh’s glamorous lighting and a constantly moving camera that involves all the brothers and finally Leila, too, all trapped in lies and conspiracies.
Apart from the false glitter of the wedding scene, which will be long remembered, the cinematography remains subdued and the interiors anchored in browns and plain furnishings. Getting through three hours of interwoven woes is made as light as possible by Bahram Dehghan’s clean editing.
Director, screenplay: Saeed Roustaee
Cast: Taraneh Alidoosti, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Payman Maadi, Farhad Aslani, Mohammad Ali Mohammadi, Saeed Poursamimi, Nayereh Farahani, Mehdi Hoseininia
Producers: Saeed Roustaee, Javad Noruzbeigi
Cinematography: Hooman Behmanesh
Editing: Bahram Dehghan
Production design: Mohsen Nasrollah
Costume design: Ghazale Motamed
Sound: Amirhossein Ghasemi
World Sales: Elle Driver
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In Farsi
169 minutes
