"The White Balloon" appears on the same bill with "The Silence Between," Jacqueline Turnure's eight-minute artily oblique meditation on a mother-daughter road trip and a painful attempt at healing old wounds. And even at 7, she shares this film maker's frankness and his gift for telling the truth. "I'll tell your mother it wasn't your fault," says the older woman reassuringly, about the lost money. The way a tailor fights with his assistant or a kindly, grandmotherly woman helps Razieh can expose a lot, especially to the sharp eyes of this determined little girl. Panahi has enough insight into human nature to create dramatic interest, too. In addition to strong visual command of this material, Mr.
"The White Balloon" has an unadorned look, but its minor events are so carefully orchestrated that it has the feel of a child's pop-up book, with interesting bits of business in every window or door frame or alley.
In fact, although this film has an urban setting, its look and tempo are very much those of a small town, one in which banter and negotiation are the central part of everyone's day. "The White Balloon" combines a French film's solemn respect for childhood with the African idea of using the simplest of transactions - the choice of a burial plot, the transfer of livestock - to reflect and explore an entire community. Still, it's a short story that can be enjoyed intently all the way through. Appearing to escalate as Razieh follows her winding path to that goldfish, and as the story unfolds in real time until the dawn of the new year, the film finally loses momentum and falls back upon the open-ended, anecdotal manner of a short story. Panahi's methods are so effective, in fact, that there's reason to wish his film had more of a destination. Razieh enlists the help of several strangers to try retrieving it from beneath an iron grate.Īnd that's really all there is to "The White Balloon," a tiny, improbably charming Iranian film directed with lovely precision by Jafar Panahi. So she wheedles her mother into giving her money for this purchase, but then the money is accidentally lost. A stern and adorable 7-year-old girl named Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) is pouting about not having the right goldfish for this occasion. It is an hour and a half before a new year begins in Teheran (on March 21), and the city is poised for celebration.