Unsatisfactory as dramatic entertainment but engrossing and significant as a protest film comment on Iranian society, made after Rasouloff's arrest and bail and contemporary with fellow condemned director Panahi's THIS IS NOT A FILM.
Lawyer Zareh is trying to manage a permit for her to leave the country. With the police suspicious of her connection to her allegedly subversive husband, whose absence complicates her legal status, this takes her though fraught dealings with contacts like the fixer, officials and acquaintances, who all have opinions on her plan.
Odd scenes get attention - the mother sitting unawares through the single take police search of the small flat.
Audiences react to the Iranian saying "If one feels like a foreigner in one's one country, it is better to leave and be a foreigner in a foreign country."
Subdued colour, minimal editing, plausible setting and performances.
