“The Locust”
Review By David House
……. Here, in this film from Iran, we meet Hanieh, a 40 year old woman who has written a semi-autobiographical screenplay, but finds herself forced to sell it to her female friend Pegah, in order to find money to pay her rent. Hanieh attends a script reading/production meeting with director Pegah, cast, and crew, where her script is analysed, criticized and changed. She spends the afternoon constantly trying to defend her vision for the story and characters to the actors and others criticizing her choices. Discussion accelerates into arguing, and descends into yelling and screaming. This is a very talky film with much of the dialogue delivered in a nonstop rapid-fire deluge. I watch a lot of subtitled films but this one was a real challenge due to the onslaught of overlapping voices.
….. In the second half of the film Hanieh’s mother and siblings show up and we get an equally annoying batch of squabbling, and noisy family drama. There are some very serious issues dealt with here about the difficulties in film production and the special challenges for women in the film industry, but I found it tough to focus on this as the viewing experience was just altogether unpleasant. There are a couple of nice touches with Hanieh breaking the fourth wall talking to us straight into the camera, and a poignant interlude where she goes into the forest to have a short conversation with the ghost of her father. Unfortunately these weren’t enough to warm me to the film, but I’m sure some art-house cinephiles will enjoy it more than me. Fortunately it comes in at just under 80 minutes.
