Chicken and Plums

Deb 2     Me 6

When it was over, the four of us walked out saying "whatta long movie". It was an hour and a half. The first few minutes were fine, you don't know any better and you just sit and watch. Then it takes a turn down a long and tedious road that seems to go on forever. I think the director realized how slow and uninteresting the film was going and added some neat vignettes to try to punch it up. But unfortunately they only served to un-necessarily complicate what was ultimately a nice little story. I don't know if its a French film set in Iran or an Iranian film spoken in French, but it felt kind of unsophisticated. They tried too hard to be odd. The casting was sort of cartoon like. The main dude was a kind of bug-eyed distant dude that I never really cared about. The others were no more engaging. Whereas "The Well Digger's Daughter" featured a beautiful and poetic French language, the sound of this French language was no fun at all; compare riding a nice bike on the sidewalk with a riding on a dirt trail with a flat.

The last third of the movie picked up. All the groundwork had been laid, all the wearisome development was behind us and the movie beautifully wrapped up. The last twenty minutes or so were brilliant. At least I thought so. Apparently the movie had drug the other viewers to a point of total disinterest and there was nothing that could save it. I'm not saying it saved it for me, just that the last few minutes were really good. It was long montages with appropriate music that moved the story along with speed and simplicity. Too bad they didn't apply that level of film making to the whole thing.