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In a series of events vaguely reminiscent of Antonioni's L'Avventura, Iranian drama About Elly sees a group of three families going on holiday north of Tehran with their children. One of the women, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), has brought along her friend Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti) in the hope of sparking a romance between her and Sepideh's brother, Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), a divorcee visiting his home country from Germany. As the families settle into a rundown beach house, a holiday spirit coalesces, and between the potential lovebirds things seem to be going awkwardly but well. Then, after a near-disaster involving one of the children, Elly has mysteriously disappeared. Has she drowned, or left for Tehran as she was threatening to do? Realising how little they knew about her, and starting to panic over how to deal with the situation, the happy group soon begins to break down amid scenes of guilt and recrimination.

This is in fact Farhadi's previous film to 2011's A Separation, only released here this year in the wake of that film's Oscar-winning establishment of him as an international star. Going on About Elly, hopefully we'll see a comprehensive recognition of his body of work in the next couple of years, as this is an incredibly well sustained ensemble drama. A story set almost exclusively within one location, it revolves around a single, ambiguous event, and otherwise relies entirely upon dialogue. It's testament to both the script and the performances that it's gripping right the way through; the joyful holiday spirit of the first half genuinely pleasing to watch, convincingly sliding into distress and tension after the accident.

Given that this is an excellent film based on any criteria, it would be reductive to analyse it too much as a cultural artefact to be contrasted with Western values, but I'm going to a little bit because it's cross-cultural power stems from it's quality as a drama. Certainly, the seriousness of one of the main exacerbating factors of Elly's disappearance and initial presence on the holiday is only appreciable to us in a morally relativist sort of way. When Sepideh is warned that she could be killed for enticing Elly the way that she had (I can't go into any more detail without spoiling a major revelation), you uneasily realise that, gross injustice though this would be, it might not be an exaggeration. This is by far the most pointed example, but the entire scenario is steeped in traditional attitudes to courtship, family and married life. Yet despite existing within this particular environment, the script is so nuanced and the performances so convincing that the characters are never eclipsed by these social strictures, and culture-specific customs never get in the way of emotional truth. The desperately unhappy ending, revolving as it does around notions of shame and honour, might be more clearly focused to an audience with similar religious and social convictions to the characters, but on a fundamental level it can be appreciated by any person with a basic sense of decency and justice. Transcending local concerns in this way is the definition of good drama.
Tom

Lawless is at its core an old-fashioned genre piece, albeit a hybrid of the heroic anti-establishmentism of the gangster film and the encroaching civilisation frequently dealt with in revisionist westerns. Based on Matt Bondurant's book, The Wettest County in the World, about the exploits of his grandfather and great-uncles in Prohibition-era Virginia, it reunites John Hillcoat and Nick Cave, the team behind The Proposition, in another violent and morally challenging tale about life on the fringes of the world.

The Bondurant brothers, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf), are part of a rural Virginian community cashing in on Prohibition by keeping the surrounding area in moonshine. While at a local level the distilling network is a generally accepted and relatively benevolent practice, it is feeding a catastrophic crime wave in the cities; it's clear that it's only a matter of time before the chaos rebounds upon the quiet rural community at its source. One day the Commonwealth Attorney turns up with his vicious enforcer, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), in tow. He wants to bring the illicit business under his control by coercing the bootleggers into working for him. The Bondurants, led by Forrest, refuse on principle; the Attorney departs, but leaves Rakes to begin a long war of attrition with the brothers and other local distillers.

While the plot isn't particularly strong or forceful, and the characters' motivations can occasionally get lost among the mumbling and drinking, Lawless is a beautifully designed and acted film. The moonshine war is interweaved with the Bondurants' personal tribulations in a way that damages the drive of the plot but succeeds in bringing the characters to life: an important achievement when even the good guys indulge in the odd bit of vengeful castration. Jack's endless quest to prove himself to his older brothers is well portrayed by LaBeouf, who does a nice line in cocky insecurity, and his and Forrest's romantic subplots are successfully worked into events so that they don't feel like distractions. Guy Pearce sneers and twitches like an aloof rodent as Rakes; whenever he's on screen he seems an inch away from committing some horrific sexual abuse.

Lawless doesn't come close to The Proposition, I think simply because it's an adaptation and Cave has trouble working someone else's material into something as coherent. Lawless is sprawling where The Proposition is sparse, and as such doesn't have the it's consistency in tone or theme, even if there are similarities in their dealing with moral corruption on both sides of the law. Fans of Cave might miss the baroque, intensely literate dialogue of the earlier film (equally, non-fans might thank Christ it's gone), but there are still flashes of his preoccupations throughout: a scene where Jack, in pursuit of Bertha (Mia Wasikowska), goes drunk to the church where her father is preaching, with it's swooning and chanting, and conflation of religious and erotic imagery, is quite easy to imagine in the form of one of his songs. Overall, Lawless is artistically flawed, but solid entertainment nontheless.
Tom