Film / Reviews
Review: The Salesman
The Salesman (12A)
Iran/France 2016 124 mins Subtitles Dir: Asghar Farhadi Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi
Iranian A Separation director Asghar Farhadi’s second Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winner has already become something of a political cause celebre. Farhadi declined to attend the Oscar ceremony because of the Trump ban. Here in the UK, the film’s distributors staged a free outdoor screening in Trafalgar Square as an act of solidarity/publicity. But in common with the rest of Farhadi’s oeuvre, The Salesman is not an overtly political movie. Sure, there are swipes at government censorship and shoddy building construction, but these are no more than asides. Eventually, it takes a detour into revenge thriller territory, becoming an unexpected counterpart to Paul Verhoeven’s Elle.
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Cultured, middle class cosmopolitan couple Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini), a popular schoolteacher, could be citizens of any big European city. But they just happen to live in Tehran, where they’re both rehearsing for an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. This is to be performed by a modestly dressed cast beneath a large, incongruous neon sign advertising those most un-Islamic leisure pursuits of gambling and boozing. We’re introduced to the couple during a symbolic cataclysm. The building in which their apartment is situated has started to collapse because of construction work next door, forcing everyone to grab what they can and flee for their lives. Friendly older troupe member Babak (Babak Karimi) then offers Rana and Emad the use of a rather shabby flat. Its previous occupant has left most of her possessions stashed in a room while she looks for alternative accommodation, and there are clear signs that she had a young child. What Babak neglects to mention is that she was a lady who enjoyed the company of many male visitors. Farhadi also gives us cause to suspect that Babak himself might have been among his gregarious former tenant’s regular callers.
When Rana arrives home before Emad one evening and leaves the door open for him, she’s brutally attacked and, it is strongly implied, raped in the shower by an intruder. This turns Emad into a low-rent arthouse Liam Neeson as he sets out to track down the perp. More interestingly as far as Farhadi is concerned, it alters the dynamic of the couple’s relationship, which is mirrored in their roles as Willy and Linda Loman in ways that are not immediately obvious.
It’s fair to say that plotting is not Farhadi’s strongest suit, as a fair bit of contrivance is required to facilitate the eventual showdown. Thriller enthusiasts may find this problematic, while a handful of the director’s more snooty arthouse champions have pronounced themselves aghast at his lapse into genre. But having engineered a face-off with an unexpected twist, Farhadi enriches it with an impressive amount of emotional tension driven in part by Emad’s powerlessness in a patriarchal society. There’s an additional parallel with Elle in that in both films nobody calls the cops, but for very different reasons. In the Verhoeven flick, Isabelle Huppert’s controlling career woman refuses to embrace victimhood; traumatised Rana has fewer choices available to her, but knows that she will be judged and, perhaps, blamed for the assault if she reports it. This is all confidently performed in neorealist style by Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, with the additional grit of suspense potentially bringing Farhadi a whole new audience.
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