You know the modern world is in a dark place when even a middle-aged Iranian woman says that things were better in the old days. Indeed, for his feature debut, director Behrooz Karamizade has fashioned an intelligent and thoughtful drama that should travel well in today’s climate of insecurity, offering a fresh perspective on a multiplicity of worldwide issues (trickle-down theory, the gig economy) while adding an especially nuanced subplot exploring the refugee crisis and the mechanics of people-trafficking.
The setting is rural Iran, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, where twentysomething Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) is struggling to make ends meet. Amir is in love with Narges (Sadaf Asgari) and wants to marry her, but Narges comes from a traditional family who think Amir is beneath her and plan to marry their daughter to the highest bidder. After a date at the funfair, where she narrowly dodges a relative, Narges says she’s “tired of playing hide and seek”. Amir tells her he’s saving for her dowry, but even Amir’s mother knows that’s not going to happen. “At a time like this?” she says, with the news playing on TV. “You were my age when you got married,” counters Amir. “We didn’t have these problems,” says his mother.
What Narges doesn’t yet know is that Amir has been fired from a job as a hotel waiter for refusing to pull the plug on a lavish wedding after it is discovered that the bride’s father has not paid the full fee upfront. Principled but now unemployed, Amir cuts a forlorn figure as he wanders the city streets, asking for work where clearly none is available. Finally a street vendor tells him of a fishery up the coast, run by a man named Ghasem (Behzad Dorani). Ghasem is old but tough, telling Amir upfront, “You only get paid here if you work hard.” Like the hotel, the fishery is part of Iran’s cash-up-front culture, and Ghasem docks his wages in advance for room and board.
Amir shares his space with a man named Omid (Keyvan Mohamadi), a quiet man who seems out of place in this dog-eat-dog enviroment, for reasons that will later be explained. Amir, meanwhile, goes all in on the new job, impressing his bosses with his underwater swimming stamina by beating the local champion in an eel-catching competition. Amir catches on pretty quickly that his boss has no morals (after he catches Amir tidying up the garbage that gets caught up in the fishing nets, Ghasem tells him, “Throw it back in the sea. It’s full of garbage anyway”). So Amit decides to confront Ghasem by telling the old man that he knows he is in involved in illegal caviar poaching and wants to be part of it. Ghasem brings him onboard, adding, “If you betray us, I’ll cut your tongue out.”
The scene is set for a bleak and, genre-wise, somewhat familiar story about an idealistic youth whose once-steadfast morals are slowly and steadily chipped away, but Karamizade very carefully makes this not a morality tale about the perils of making bad decisions but a stark indictment of a society that takes away hope at every opportunity. Amir is an honest, hard-working boy who dreams of owning a hotel one day, but the closest he gets to that fantasy is hanging out in an empty construction site where he meets Narges in secret: a luxury hotel that was never finished. In contrast to Amir, who wants to get on, is Omid, who wants to get out: Omid is a writer on the run from the authorities, and has placed his faith in Ghasem, who says he will smuggle him overseas for a price. When Ghasem seems to renege on the deal, Omid makes the pitch to Adil, a decision that will cost them both dearly.
It’s hard-hitting stuff, but Karamizade has a light touch, and his DoP, Ashkan Ashkani, gives the film a suitably seductive aquatic-blue palette that reflects its all-consuming vision of a man who’s, metaphorically, lost at sea. Abbasi is particularly good in this respect, a modest but charismatic leading man, in the style of Gael Garcia Bernal, who engages us even as he fails ever further downwards. Indeed, it’s a measure of this subtle film that, and the end of it all, it allows us a breather, a glimmer of hope: the belief that, for some, the current dead-end culture of life in Iran — and anywhere else, for that matter — might yet turn out to be escapable.
Title: Empty Nets
Festival: Karlovy Vary (Crystal Globes Competition)
Director/screenwriter: Behrooz Karamizade
Cast: Hamid Reza Abbasi, Sadaf Asgari, Keyvan Mohamadi, Pantea Panahiha
Running time: 1hr 41 min
Sales agent: Pluto Film