Cannes review: ‘Holy Spider’ by Ali Abbasi

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if we know the story is true or not. Watch the thunder of Ali Abbas holy spiderOn the other hand, the wedge pushes you into your mind knowing that a serial killer terrorized the holy city of Mashhad in Iran in the early 2000s, that he killed 16 street prostitutes, that it was the police who planned the escape. to the. That there were people in Iran – many people, the family says – who were on the side of the killers. He was doing God’s work.

The latest film by the Swedish-Iranian director Ali Abbas was not classifiable PerimeterA parable about exiles and foreigners, with a sadly grotesque Swedish customs troll. Perimeter In 2018 he won the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Film in the Side Lines section. holy spider is in the festival competition – nominally a step up from UCR freshmen and experimenters – and appears to be a more common type of film, a detective thriller in which a brave and determined young reporter (Tsar Amir-Ebrahimi) opens a scandal , nobody. The government wants a touch. Connected to a line it sounds like a repeat of a dozen thrillers. holy spider However, it is never safe to choose a genre. In reverse. He cracks and glows with anger.

Rahim arrives in Mashhad from Tehran on a bus full of pilgrims. Not surprisingly, her life is portrayed as an everyday obstacle: a hotel maid who doesn’t give her a reserved room because she arrived without her husband, strangers tell her to cover her hair more. A newspaper colleague awkwardly asks him about rumors about his sexual past, about how cops smile when he reads them when they ask him more directly about that past. The woman obviously has a backbone of steel. When she decides that the best way to solve the killer would be to use her body as bait, everything he wants to do seems strange.

We know who the killer is. Said (Mahdi Bajestan) is a builder and devoted family man, especially when he has fun with his beloved daughter. It is true that he can be irritated. Your grown son can feel the punches of righteous anger if he doesn’t look, and even if he hates to admit it, the case of finding and killing these dirty workers is unnerving. Those who are addicted don’t fight much, but some are stronger.

He kills them at home; Conveniently, his wife takes the children to visit their grandparents once a week. If you feel excited about fighting, pray to Allah. Then unload the body somewhere local, call a police reporter from a local newspaper, who has recorded all of their conversations but never thought about it or asked to be turned over to the police, and go home, clearing another corner. of the road. .

At one point, Said smiles with a cheerful smile that if he kills 200 women, he will break the mission’s back; They just have to let them do it. His self-esteem with his own virtues is the most exciting thing about him. Indeed the correction. Said is a war veteran who has propaganda about martyrdom and the crime he survived; It is not common sense at all. The worst thing about this is the fact that he gathers fans. There are those, including Fatima, his devoted devoted wife (Forouzan Jamshidnejad), who are convinced that he will never be able to judge what constitutes jihad against sin.

Rahim’s investigation led him into dark alleys, actually shot in Jordan, and darker life forms, often shot in deep shadow, giving the film an occasional film noir patina, with Martin Dirkov’s growing score accustomed to to melodramatic influences such as murders. Keep coming.

Watching women choke is obviously creepy, but these scenes are back to basics, with bright, flat lights – while you’re here, Abbas seems to be saying you can know the terrible truth. The bigger truth, of course, is that the right-wing press, fundamentalist fanatics and all of her feminist colleagues who coerced Said and his horrific deeds, including his son, whom we see as he continues his search, are only 20 years old in more . . . ᲠWhat are they doing now?