A Few Kilos Of Dates For A Funeral

A film with a title as perplexing as itself, A Few Kilos OF Dates For A Funeral could be called a love story, but it is not so easily pigeonholed. Three lonely men, two of whom run a petrol-station on a little-used road, the third of whom is a postman whose greatest wish is for a motorbike to replace his decrepit bicycle, deal with not so much romance as the pretence of romance, wishful thinking to such a degree that it is almost made reality. One appears to manage it, but he has achieved his goals by living through another, stealing another’s words as his own.

This is a film about relationships: the ways in which human beings drive each other crazy and the ways in which we struggle to find comfort for ourselves and those we care about. It is also about the ways in which we deceive ourselves, persuade ourselves that everything will be all right if we can just find that one special person to love and our lives will be better and our problems will be over. It is also about disappointments and the depressing frequency with which life presents us with them.

The bleak setting of the Iranian desert seems to represent the characters’ emotional as well as physical isolation. Sadry’s constant prayers for snow (in order that might he keep secret the one thing keeping him going in life) are effectively prayers for continuing isolation as the snow fences him in and prevents the few customers he would have had from attempting the drive in the first place.

Throughout all this there is a vein of deepest black comedy, from the mild slapstick interactions between Sadry and his eager-to-please lovesick assistant to the absurdities that occur between the generations when living space is cramped. Human beings are as absurd as we are tragic, and this film knows it.