Tales

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Audience Member One of the perks of film-making is that we can take a peak into someoneâ??s country or culture. It is quite special when it is the case of a country that is distant but highly active in the media and politics, which at the same time is subject to yellow press and misinterpretation. In Tales (Ghesse-Ha), director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad shows us a series of short vignettes about the daily life in Tehran. These glimpses show people struggling with bureaucracy, corruption, unemployment, and life, in a country that has been stereotyped by the Western world. There are quite a few things to a appreciate in Tales, for instance, it is amazing that the director is a woman. Bani-Etemad has been making films since the 80s and that says a lot about our stigmatized view of some countries in the Middle East. Of course, I have no clue how life is in Iran, but the way the film was shot, and the marvelous work by the cast, made me feel I was watching something real, and that shows a society that is not concordant to its government, as probably many people in this side of the world think. However, apart from all the social implication of Tales, I do think it has a storytelling problem. All the vignettes are very loosely close to one another, but this makes everything extremely convoluted. Not convoluted as in â??oh, I canâ??t follow the story because it is too difficultâ??, but as in sometimes it jumps back and forth to past characters in an asymmetrical manner and it gives the impression that there are vignettes that are more important than others, and that made me lose interest in some of the stories conveyed. The weight of storytelling is imbalanced. Furthermore, the dialogue is quite ambiguous and you often feel like it is going nowhere and it will continue to do so. Sometimes, there is no dramatic relevance to scenes, and that jeopardizes the thin thread with which the different stories are connected by. I was surprised when I heard it won the Golden Lion for Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival. In a nutshell, even if Tales is a quite forgettable movie, it was enlightening to be able to take a peak into some aspects of Iranian life. I wish the stories and the dialogue were more organized. I do have to say that there are better Iranian films out there. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member A movie without a concret story, but at the same time is a movie with a lot of stories that catch you. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Tales

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