Mani Hagigi’s new film “Subtraction”. Review

At the box office – “Subtraction” (Subtraction), the film, perhaps the best and certainly the most paradoxical Iranian director Mani Hagighi. Hagigi’s creative unpredictability, a director’s rarest quality these days, delights Mikhail Trofimenkov.

The main trouble with auteur cinema in recent years or even decades is that after the first ten minutes of the film you understand what will happen next and how it will be filmed. The intonation is set from the very beginning, the secrets of the characters, if any, are written on their faces – guessing whether they will be “everything is good” or “everything is bad” is pointless: everything is predictable. Simply put, auteur cinema has become a kind of genre, because predictability is its generic feature.

Against this dull background, the magnificent Persian Hagigi amazes with every film. It is impossible to predict how the intrigue will break, how the intonation of the film will change: it is clear in advance only what will break and change. And at the same time, the scenario logic never bends or breaks: the most incredible events are impeccably linked to each other.

The film “A Dragon Comes” (2016) was Borges’s fairy tale-parable about chthonic forces in a good sense of the word: ancient beliefs and rituals were intertwined with the realities of the Shah’s repressions of the 1970s. “Pig” (2018) is a furious, rock and roll satire on all national cinema and filmmakers, and indeed on the entire Tehran intelligentsia, comfortably accustomed to the role of “victims of the regime”.

“Subtraction” provocatively begins just in the manner of Iranian auteur cinema. Hagigi, of course, is the flesh of the flesh from this film school, and his attitude towards it is built according to the scheme of love-hate: if you wish, in “Subtraction” you can see a roll call with “The Salesman” (2016) by Asghar Farhadi, another foggy-crime-family drama .

For some reason, Iranian directors are very fond of filming long dialogues of their characters in car interiors. Here, too, in Hagigi, the beginning of “Subtraction” is reminiscent of the films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf or Jafar Panahi. In Tehran, flooded with incessant downpour — one of the heroines remarks that “we live like in a washing machine” — fans of Iranian cinema will feel at home. Endless traffic jam. Driving school car. Instructor Farzane (Tarane Alidosti) routinely polishes her nails while her young student talks some nonsense.

True, before this everyday scene, something strange flickers, filmed to the point of complete indistinguishability in the general plan: someone is running, someone is being beaten. But this glimpse seems like a random vision. In the meantime, Farzaneh leaves her student in a traffic jam when she sees her husband, locksmith Jalal (Navid Mohammadzadeh), on the street, who should not be in Tehran at that moment, but on a business trip in Bandar Abbas. A flash of jealousy, surveillance – and, oh yes, Farzane observes the date of the missus with a certain woman.

Iranian women know how to stand up for themselves. The pregnant Farzane makes a presentation to her husband, the father conducts a male conversation with him, and the kindest Jalal does not understand anything. Yes, I was on a business trip, here are the documents confirming this.

In general, it seems that we are facing a domestic drama, although a slight mystical chill is already oozing from the screen. The chill will turn into a bitter cold when it turns out that Farzane does not suffer from hallucinations at all, as her doctor believes. Farzaneh and Jalal do have a doppelgänger couple: Mohsen (Mohammadzadeh), a violently violent manager who has just crippled his elderly boss and is under the law, and Bita (Alidosti), a former nurse who left her job after the birth of her son.

Who is who, with each episode, it becomes harder and harder to understand not only for the audience, but also for the characters: thanks to the skill of Hagigi, we grow into their skin. It is perhaps appropriate to use the term vertigo (“Vertigo” or “Fear of Heights”), as Alfred Hitchcock called his crime masterpiece (1958) on the subject of alleged duality, when applied to “Subtraction”. But Hagigi’s duality is quite real.

The mystical drama imperceptibly develops almost into vaudeville when two pairs of doubles meet face to face. Then – into a black comedy, when men begin to change places in situations that are fraught with serious damage to physical health, and even life. Then – almost in a horror movie, when the degree of misunderstanding by the heroes of their own existential status – “Are we clones?” — escalates to a bloody catharsis. And then – in the high tragedy of love.

Such are the genre swings, on which anyone except Mani Hagiga is hardly capable of swinging in modern cinema. Moreover, the last two phrases, sounding from the screen, open new “gates of perception” of the film.