Another impressive film is coming from Iran, and after the good crime film “Just 6.5”, the young hope there, Saeed Roustayi, confirmed that the author is ready to take over the baton from a whole galaxy of older colleagues. “Leila’s Brothers” had its premiere in the competition program of the festival in Cannes, and this realistic drama, which is also another interesting study of Iranian society, won the Film Critics Association Award. It is a film for which Roustayi found a role model in both European and American cinematography, and watching “Leila’s Brothers” I was reminded of Visconti’s classic “Rocco and his Brothers”.
Only here, in addition to four brothers, we also have one sister, the title character Leila (the excellent Taraneh Alidoosti who we remember from Farhadi’s “The Salesman”), a 40-year-old woman who, we will understand very quickly, is actually a victim of the patriarchal system and the only capable one in a large family incompetents, slackers, crooks and scoundrels. Leila lives with her old parents, because it is her daughter’s turn to take care of them, regardless of the fact that she is practically the only one working for her siblings. Because of this, she also has to help her brothers, and the eldest, Parviz (Farhad Aslani), a fat 50-year-old occasionally works as a toilet cleaner in a shopping center, but the job that his sister found for him is nowhere near enough to earn enough to support his wife and several children. .
Nabildan Farhad (Mohammad Ali Mohammadi) is only interested in watching American wrestling on television, Manouchehr (Payman Maadi) is a petty cheater who is constantly looking for some schemes instead of a real job, while Alireza (Navid Mohammadzadeh) seems to be the only brother with such work habits and responsibilities. but he also just quit his job at a factory that is collapsing due to sanctions and wages are not being paid. As the icing on the cake, there is their old father Esmail (Saeed Poursamimi), a cynical grandfather on the trail of Držić’s Group or Moliere’s The Miser, who is only interested in becoming the patriarch of the clan, i.e. of the extended family, after that position was “vacated” by the death of the previous elder.
However, becoming an elder is not so easy, and it will cost him 40 gold coins, which he usually hides from the children like a snake’s legs. He should give those gold coins as a wedding gift to the relative who decides on the new elder, but during that time Leila came up with a plan to find work for the brothers. A new shopping center is being built on the site of Parviz’s public toilet, and she plans to buy an office space for a store, and she is convinced that it would be a good investment, but the problem is that they all do not have enough money together. They could use the gold coins that the old madman plans to give away at the wedding so casually, not even considering Leila’s business proposal, because what the hell can a woman know about business.
By the end, it will become clear to us why people in Iran keep their savings in gold, because the country under sanctions is prone to economic crises and currency devaluations, and gold is still the perfect choice for preserving value there. “Leila’s Brothers” is an impressive drama that at the end almost turns into a black comedy about the patriarchy and misogyny of Iranian society, which also stands out with great acting performances. Alidoosti is brilliant as a woman who has practically sacrificed her own life and interests to take care of her family, only to receive disappointment and contempt in return.
No matter how capable, smarter and more valuable she is than her brothers, her father and mother will never look at her equally, and all the brothers behave just like leeches and it is completely normal for them to rely on their sister in everything. Although it is clear to us that Leila is seething with anger and misery because she is stuck with such rascals and is completely exhausted from such a life, she will still try to use the last atom of strength and will to try to get them out. She tries to save them from themselves and help them to finally start their own business, hoping that she will finally be able to breathe on her own, but it won’t be that easy.