FIFI AZ KHOSHHALI ZOOZE MIKESHAD

When Mitra Faharani finds in Rome the famous Iranian painter Bahman Mohassess, who had been relegated to oblivion by the post-revolutionary regime, she is unaware that she will be filming the last months of his life. Yet, the film is full of joy. Although this homosexual artist went into exile in 1954 after Mossadegh’s overthrow, a Pasolini-like vitality characterises the man and his work. Fifi Howls from Happiness, one of the few paintings he did not destroy but hung in his hotel room, sums up his mix of vivacity and despair. “We built and we destroyed, leaving the world with nothing but a sad song”: this line by Marino Marini, which is forced on the filmmaker, is one of the many playful and sometimes explosive injunctions that punctuate their fragile, poignant relationship. Mohassess treats the film in the making as a self-portrait that he can destroy as he chooses. When Faharani introduces him to two art patrons that commission a painting from him, she is treading in Balzac’s footsteps since the undertaking has all the makings of The Unknown Masterpiece. Like the rest of the voice-over commentary, this literary reference serves as a passage between the inherently familiar form of the filmed portrait and the staggeringly grim violence that brutally left it unfinished. (Charlotte Garson)