shifté shab Karimi N شیفت شب

Iran, 2015, 96mn, Niki Karimi

A social drama about a middle-class couple caught up in a downward economic spiral, which they disguise from each other and the world with a web of lies, the story is meatier than Karimi’s other films but the characters are hard to warm up to. It looks earmarked for festival turns on the strength of the director’s name, but its main audience is probably at home.

Though the box office draw is actor Mohammad Reza Foroutan as the secretive, depressed husband Farzad, the story actually revolves around his wife, Nahid (Leyla Zareh,) she’s initially presented as a superficial, distracted housewife who bustles around the kitchen on the phone with her mom, while packing their small daughter Baran off to school. The fact that Baran’s only interest in life is her pet rabbit makes her a write-off as a character, and she plays a very marginal role in the ensuing drama. Nahid, on the other hand, transforms more than evolves, into a determined woman who takes things into her own hands to save her marriage.

As in most Tehran-set tales, the neighbors play a Greek chorus of malignant rumor-mongers. Here they believe Farzad is cheating on his wife — why else would he come home at midnight and sleep in his car in the condo garage? They are clearly more perceptive than Nahid, who is blind to how he drags himself home all stressed out and depressed. It’s 20 minutes into the film before she learns he was fired from his accounting job three months earlier under a dark shadow of suspicion. A friend has to tell her he bought a gun and plans to commit suicide. But instead of confronting him, she decides to trail him around town to see what he does all day.

Ces films faits en Iran réflètent une réalité un peu plus grise que ceux réalisés à l'extérieur, femme au foyer, ignorante des soucis du mari, insouciante, pas capable de réagir sans un homme à ses côtés. Envie de vivre au-dessus de ses moyens, violence masculine, distance physique du jeune couple.