Jafar Panahi’s ‘taut revenge thriller’ becomes frontrunner to take Cannes’ top prize

After years of imprisonment and travel prohibitions in his native Iran, Jafar Panahi returns to Cannes with a furious but funny thriller that points to oppressive regimes and could take the palm d’Or.

The film begins with a pulmonary, uninterrupted and misleading photo of a great man (Ebrahim Azizi) and his happy and pregnant wife who drives on the side of the country the same, with her playful daughter in the back seat. When the car breaks down, the husband persuades a mechanic to play it, but the mechanic’s colleague, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) recognizes a chilling combination of sounds: the unequal steps of some legs. A CUE, and The Squency A clean, and The Squence A Cuño, and the Squa a Cuño, and The Squa -a Clean, and the Squ, and Clean, and The Squ, and Clean, and The Squence A clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean, and a clean.

One of the issues that go through competition films at the Cannes Film Festival of this year is how difficult it can be to fight justice when the State gets in its way. In two prosecutors, the bureaucracy in the USSR of Stalin annoying the truth to dust. In Eagles of the Republic, an Egyptian actor is led by viscos officials, both at work and at home. The 137 file is established in today’s France, but even there, a police investigation is obstructed by the systems that protect some types of criminals rather than others.

The most immediate and personal of these films is that it was only an accident, written and directed by Jafar Panahi. Panahi has been imprisoned and prohibited repeatedly in his film in his native Iran, and has been subject to so many trip prohibitions that he has not been in Cannes since 2003 (although his films have made it), so it is not surprising that his last film is so frank about life under an oppressive regime. What can be more surprising is that it was only an accident balances the fury with warmth, humor and sympathy for its characters, even when it is put on the most gloomy issue possible.

These sounds, which have pursued Vahid’s nightmares for years, remember some that call leg leg, a sadistic interrogator that tortured him while he was imprisoned for sedition charges. By impulse, Vahid knocked out the man with a shovel and puts it in a box in the back of his truck. He plans to bury Pue’s leg in the desert, and the film, with his dusty mountain views, feels like a classic western history of border justice.

But wait. Vahid always had bandaged eyes while he was in prison, so he can’t be sure that the man who has caught is PEG’s leg, after all. He decides to lead the city to get a second opinion of a friend who was locked up with him, but just then, things are not so simple. In a short time, Vahid is full of former prisoners who argue about the matter, including a cunning wedding photographer (Mariam Afshari), an angry woman (Hadis Pakbaten) who is getting married the next day, and a bitter that Elyasme tho Ihamad aiasmeotm vahid, captive, is a leg or not.

It was only an accident is a tense and twisted thriller of revenge loaded with ethical heavyweight dilemmas. It is an explicit heartbreaking about what the characters have suffered, but ask if they can ever be justified when using the same abduction of methods, torture, such as their oppressors. Even if you can be sure that your captive is the pinch leg, do you have the right to execute it? On the other hand, do they have an option? Have they gone so far that they will be in more problems if they release it than if they finish the work?

Panahi mixes these problems with a healthy dose of comedy. Vahid and his associates are not thirst for blood, but a group of disputes that can be frustrated in their mission when running out of gas: at one time, they have to push from the garage, including the bride’s wedding dress. Meanwhile, they not only look over their shoulders from the secret police, but are being irritated by endemic and low -level corruption. One of the various ironic examples has two security guards produced by their own portable card readers so that they can accept bribes of people who do not have cash on the subject.

These ridiculous vignettes are not just light relief, thought. They drive the powerful Panahi point that heroes and villains are not monumental figures in uniform. Those who have committed sausage evils, those who have supported them, and those who have been delayed and let the evils occur, can be seen in any sunny street, continuing with their ordinary lives with friends and family.

Panahi puts these terrifying but moving ideas in a film that is as fast and unpretentious as any scope of the crime. I could go to Iran with the first prize of Cannes, La Palma d’Or, after the festival ends this weekend.