Ghesse-ha

This episodic film shows the seamier side of contemporary, urban Iran (it is surprising that the government censors let it through), including prostitution, drug addiction, drug trafficking, corruption, marital infidelity, etc. The episodes themselves (which are very loosely connected, with a documentary filmmaker having a cameo in most of them) are very uneven, going from the inspired to the amateurish. Apparently, some of the characters in them have appeared in past movies of the director. The best episode has a venal bureaucrat abusing a retired citizen who has arrived to his office asking for his health insurance to cover a recent operation. The episode of the jealous husband arriving to a women's shelter to attack his runaway wife is not very impressive. The one with the illiterate worker flying with rage when a letter arrives (which he cannot read) to his wife from her former husband starts well but ends in a note of sentimentality. And the first and last episodes, both set on a taxi, are pretty dismal, full of never ending, aimless chatting.