Five

Every film Kiarostami makes is different, inventive. Life and Nothing More, in which a young Iranian meets a beautiful girl, claims to be a well-known Iranian film-maker, gets carried away by his fiction and ends up in court before a judge: a true story. Kiarostami persuaded everyone in the story, the judge included, to re-enact what they said and did, and makes a film out of it. Ten, made up of material filmed with two cameras in an Iranian woman's car as she drives around, picks up her son, meets her friends. One thing they all have in common: you can't find a better way to see what life in Iran is like.

& then Five is different again. Five long takes is the full title. & that's what the film is. No plot, nothing acted, framed and edited with movie-director skill. & it's very refreshing. We watch, and almost nothing happens. At dawn a pack of dogs wakes at the water's edge. We watch for 15 or 20 minutes. One dog moves a few metres. One by one the others follow. That's it. The camera is set up on a promenade: people walk by, stop and talk, walk on. It's as if he gives us space to reflect, dream, just as we do in real life. All except for the fifth 'take' which he himself admits (there's an interview in the Extras) was compiled from a number of occasions. In effect it isn't a single take, and it shows: it feels contrived. The moon is shining on the water, corkscrewed by ripples. Clouds pass over. Frogs croak. Thunder and a rainstorm. Dogs bark. Then cocks crow: it starts to get light. Strangely enough, too much seems to be happening, as if we've become very convinced by nothing much happening. When it gets light, it gets light, from darkness to visibility, in three or four minutes. It feels wrong! Nothing at all about life in Iran, but definitely different.