Mama's Guest

Dariush Mehrjui, Iranian film's great survivor, raises copious smiles with this gentle, if slightly protracted satire on tradition, hospitality and snobbery on the margins of Islamic society. The gradual manner in which various impoverished neighbours rally to help highly strung Golab Adineh feed her soldier nephew and his new bride allows Mehrjui to touch on topics as diverse as women's education, union activism, cinema and the disenfranchised's blind faith in authority. The ensemble lurches between minor crises with such a sense of communal calamity that it's impossible not to be both amused and touched by their eccentricity, naivety and occasional histrionics.