Par (2020)

Directed by: Siamak Etemadi | 101 minutes | drama | Actors: Shahbaz Noshir, Melika Foroutan, Sofia Kokkali, Argyris Pandazaras, Lena Kitsopoulou, Lefteris Tsatsis, Bijan Daneshmand, Dimitris Xanthopoulos, Aspasia Kokosi

The family drama ‘Pari’ is a hybrid operation, wandering between social-realistic cinema and mystery play. An Iranian couple, mother Pari (Foroutan) and stepfather Farrokh (Noshir), travel to Athens to search for her son, a variant on the refugee story with potential and initial strength. A Muslim couple tries to reconnect with their son who has fled west, which commands respect. The search largely ends in disillusionment, as so often in life. There are traces, but Babak seems untraceable.

The game is solid, Foroutan can handle the lead well and the visual aspects are taken care of. The film focuses on maternal strength with sparse dialogues; at one point the poorly English-speaking woman is on her own. After an hour ‘Pari’ reaches an emotional climax, with a beautiful scene in which Pari falls down in a Greek alley in despair and is comforted by a stray dog. In terms of plot unwinding, it is less; the last third of the film languishes in dream images, and the tension seems to go up in smoke.

Perhaps necessary, but it takes too long and is an equally poignant, vague and not very purifying experience in the depths of Athens, in which we do not really get any closer to the matter. The quest for completed drama often runs counter to the emptiness of reality, but it could have been otherwise, for example with an hour-long film that ends with the described scene. Somehow, a daring and forced ending seems to be embedded by the debutant Etemadi – an Iranian who has lived and worked in Greece for years, seeking connections between the social problems of the two countries.