A Respectable Family – Yek Khanévadeh-e Mohtaram (2012)

Directed by: Massoud Bakhshi | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Babak Hamidian, Mehrdad Sedighian, Mehran Ahmadi, Ahu Kheradmand, Parivash Nazarieh, Behnaz Jafari, Mehrdad Ziaei, Niki Nasirian

With a title like ‘A Respectable Family’ you can expect two things from a film: either it is indeed about a decent family, or things happen in the family that cannot bear the light of day. Three guesses which is more interesting for a thriller…

At the center of Iran’s ‘A Respectable Family’ is Arash, a professor who, after more than two decades of studying and making a career in France, has returned to his hometown of Shiraz in Iran. At the invitation of the University, he started teaching here and went back to live with his (single) mother. Both Arash and his mother have severed all ties with his father, but when he dies – just as Arash is back in Iran – leaving them a substantial sum of money, family relations are strained.

At the beginning of the film, we witness someone (whose point-of-view we see) gets into a taxi and is then beaten up and dragged unconscious, missing one shoe. We remain in the dark for a long time about the how and why, nor who it is. And so there is more that confuses in ‘A Respectable Family’. Images from the past are interspersed with scenes from the present, without it being initially clear what is happening when and who it is about. That ambiguity is a bit distracting in the beginning, so it takes a while before the film hits you. But as soon as director Massoud Bakhshi manages to drag you along with his first feature, which happens after about 45 minutes, he won’t let go of you.

Arash grew up in Iran in the 1980s. Experiencing that turbulent period, during the Iran-Iraq War, in your youth, leaves its traces irrevocably and that is also apparent from the story of Arash. His family had to learn to deal with the consequences of an intense family drama and each did so in their own way. And while the adult Arash appears to have no visible damage from this event, the wounds are reopened when confronted with certain places and people. It is as if during his stay in the West he has become a different person, with a different background, but by returning to his native country he also returns to the body and soul he left behind and has to learn to deal with the emotions anew. that causes.

In ‘A Respectable Family’ the political and social situation in Iran is seamlessly linked with family history, something we saw earlier in the gripping, also Iranian ‘A Separation’. ‘A Respectable Family’ does not want to be as impressive as that film, but the complexity of Iranian history and current society is made clear in a penetrating way. Archive images of the war that have been incorporated into the film by the director provide the necessary background information. Arash has to deal with bureaucracy (a passport that is not given to him because of military exemption), censorship (his classes at the university are unceremoniously interfered with by the management), corruption and violence, something that he sees with growing astonishment. It’s clear that Arash has outgrown his homeland, but which choice he has to make will long remain a surprise. Thanks to the shocking beginning, the entire film remains pregnant with a sense of doom. Despite the minor flaws, Massoud Bakhshi certainly puts himself and Iranian cinema firmly on the map with ‘A Respectable Family’.