Friday, January 27, 2017

Melbourne - Movie Review

An Irani classic. Amirali and Sara, a young, childless couple, are leaving Teheran and relocating to Melbourne for a three year period. It's their last day in Teheran and they are doing many things - packing, doing last minute stuff, handing over the apartment, dealing with family etc. In the midst of this chaos, their neighbour's nanny drops in and asks Sara if she could look after the newly born baby for an hour because she has some important work to do.

As they go about their work the baby is asleep. The nanny does not turn up. Sometime during the day Amirali discovers that the baby is not moving - and soon after, that she is dead. The nanny has disappeared, her phone is not working, the father of the child appears and demands the baby but Amirali thwarts him off with a lie, only to discover soon that the baby is in the middle of a separation between the father and the mother. As the couple do not understand why and what happened, as they come to terms with their guilt and confusion, they realise that the nanny was missing. Perhaps the baby was already dead when she gave it to them? The videos shot earlier in the day confirm that the baby was not dead then - she moved. Perhaps it died because of SIDS - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? Even as the couple decides to go to the police because the nanny seems to be the culprit, she arrives. The couple somehow tell the nanny to come back later, leave the baby with an unsuspecting neighbour and head off to Melbourne.

As Irani movies go it's as brilliant as any other I have seen. With just two main characters, a small house, the drama is taut, the range of human emotion and fallibility is at its extreme. Superb. 

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