1001 Frames

Bluesky

“Oh, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it”, sang Faith No More’s first frontman Chuck Mosley on the titular song of the band’s first album We Care a Lot. Film criticism is not a dirty job, but reviewing certain types of films still feels like a chore. It is deliciously easy with the good, the bad and the ugly movies, gets a bit challenging with mediocre ones, but with a certain type, whose sole purpose of existence is to please festival selection committees by pushing a certain type of agenda, the job of reviewing it bears a striking resemblance to pain in the lower back region.

The case in point, Mehrnoush Alia’s 1001 Frames, which premiered at the Panorama section of Berlinale, certainly falls into the latter slot. Firstly, it acts and feels like an overstretched short film, because it is. Alia expands on Scheherazade (2015), but the result is pretty much devoid of action, genre elements and the nimbleness of the 15-minute short. The basic plotting, however, remains the same: a renowned filmmaker (Mohammad Aghebati) is auditioning the actresses for the lead and other female roles in his adaptation of 1001 Nights, but the whole process takes a darker turn when his motives, other than finding a perfect cast, are revealed. As the actresses are of different ages, experiences and backgrounds, they have their own motives to collaborate with the director, and at least one of them shares some history with him.

Such a setting might serve well as a canvas to lay out the tensions within society, this time in Iran, or within the filmmaking industry. As we know, the latter is pretty much male-centric and often infested with opportunistic predators, sleazeballs and sadistic abusers, hiding behind the mask of artistic genius. We shall not be learning more about either of those aspects from 1001 Frames, as the plot points and the passing remarks remain along the lines of any and every showbiz scandal and the news headlines coming from Iran.

If 1001 Frames was a documentary, maybe something along the lines of Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher (2022), which is also set as a casting process for the adaptation of a cultural phenomenon of a book, it would potentially expose some deeper and hidden truths of Iranian society and culture both in the present and in the past. However, Alia opts for heavily scripted drama that simply loses momentum by the end of the introductory act, falling into a predictable multitude of individual conflicts and manipulations. Some kind of “action” sets in by the end, but it proves to be too little and too late to turn the things for the better.

The minimalist setting and the production design of a largely unfurnished improvised studio do not help either, nor does the unchanging directing style. It consists of usually dimly lit long hand-held shots focusing on the actresses’ facial expression and body postures, while the director remains a largely menacing presence by the means of his off-screen voice. Truth to be told, Alia “treats” us by showing the “baddie’s” lower body, but never his face, for whatever reason.

Noble intentions and the somewhat “literate” execution of these suffice not to crucify the film completely. But the truth is that 1001 Frames is a pretty empty and tiresome experience. One of the kinds that the viewer who stumbles upon it without being tasked with reviewing it would leave, sleep through, or both, without the feeling that anything would be missed.