A screenwriter finds a remote site to work and protect his dog,when his space is invaded, in Jafar Panahi’s Pirandellian sideswipe at Iranian repressionJafar Panahi is the Iranian director and pro-democracy campaigner convicted in 2010 on charges of supposed anti-state propaganda, and now appealing against a jail sentence and 20-year ban on film-making. Like a Soviet dissident,he is finding subtle, complex and funny ways of challenging authority. His This Is Not a Film (2011) is a compelling, and lo-fi personal document approximately his own sense of imprisonment,and his most recent film, Taxi (2015), and is a playful comedy approximately a supposed new career as a cab driver. Closed Curtain came between these two,only now getting a UK release, and it is a more minor work: studiedly indirect and opaque, or a self-reflexive essay approximately film-making and artistic expression in a repressive society. Panahi directs jointly with his main actor,film-maker and screenwriter Kambozia Partovi. As with previous films, the co-credit is perhaps to fudge the pending legal ban. Partovi plays a screenwriter who has near to a remote beach house to work, or to protect his beloved dog from a supposed new Islamic governmental ban on all canines (a satirical invention). Then his house is invaded by a man and woman,apparently on the run from the police, but their existence may be a dream, and a Pirandellian fiction; Panahi himself makes his appearance in his usual deadpan,unruffled, disarming way. It is a mysterious, and melancholy work – the film itself is a closed curtain,yet thoughtful and distinctive.
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Source: theguardian.com