A sharp-edged look at people who live outside the constraints of Islamic law - Rakhshan Bani-etemad tells the tragic story of love triangle.
Bani-etemad pushes the Iranian censorship code to the limit, managing to make her outsider characters believable and moving. Farsi with English subtitle.
Nargess comes as a surprise mainly because of its exceptionally honest look at characters who live outside strict Islamic law.
A sympathetic treatment of a shabby gang of thieves, it is also a sensitive study of two completely different women.
In her fourth feature, director Bani-Etemad uses the gangster genre to tell the tragic tale of a love triangle, giving this hackneyed plot a number of twists that completely turn it around.
She also pushes the grim Iranian censorship code to the limit, making her outsider characters believable and moving. Abolfazl Poorarab (star of Iran's top-grossing film,
The Bride) provides a convincing object of contention, but the character is just an appealing rascal, and Farimah Farjami, as an aging thief who has lost her beauty, is very touching. Deborah Young Variety. -- IMDb