Also in this section:

• History & The Movies
• The Patriot Affair
• Hollywood Blacklist
• General Film Pieces
• Movie Reviews

Djomeh
September 7, 2001
By JONATHAN FOREMAN
2 stars

So many of today's wonderful Iranian films have an honesty and purity that the Dogme '95 filmmakers can only dream of achieving. These are qualities that Hassan Yektapanah's "Djomeh" shares.

But despite wining the Camera d'Or at Cannes, it turns out to be one of the more overrated films from that country, notable mainly for its attractive, even spectacular mountain locations.

Agonizingly slow-moving and talky, it consists primarily of conversations between two men in a truck.

Djomeh (Jalil Nazari), is a shy, 20-year-old, East-Asian looking Afghan refugee working on a dairy farm in a remote mountainous region of Iran. Every day, he drives into town to collect milk from the locals with Mr. Mahmoud, the farm's owner.

And it's during their conversations that we learn it wasn't politics that drove him from his homeland but a scandalous love affair with an older woman.

Now, Djomeh has fixated on Setareh, the daughter of the local shopkeeper. But the villagers are suspicious of and hostile to foreigners, even Moslems like Djomeh. And any chance of marrying Setareh will depend on his securing Mahmoud's cooperation.