The Persian Version

Directed by Maryam Keshavarz, The Persian Version follows struggling filmmaker Leila (Layla Mohammadi) as she attempts to overcome personal problems and revelations. Filmmaker Keshavarz, working from her own screenplay, delivers a mostly interminable comedy that remains hopelessly unable to capture the viewer’s interest and attention (even fleetingly), with the movie’s arms-length atmosphere compounded by a frenetic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink narrative that progresses at a frenetic pace but contains little worth wholeheartedly embracing. (The movie is, by and large, just so relentlessly, frustratingly irreverent (ie enough with the fourth-wall-breaking, already), to the point where it becomes impossible to actually care about the protagonist’s exploits.) And while Keshavarz has elicited a relatively charming performance from Mohammadi, The Persian Version suffers from an episodic, momentum-free midsection that eventually gives way to a disastrously padded-out (and downright endless) flashback-focused third act – with the total ineffectiveness of this stretch especially disappointing given the potentially searing nature of its subject matter. The final result is a complete misfire that feels so much longer than its 107 minutes, and it’s impossible not to wonder, ultimately, what Keshavarz initially set out to accomplish with this mess.

1/2* out of ****