Iranian censors haven't allowed director Bahman Farmanara to make a movie in his country for 23 years, but for some reason they green-lighted this autobiographical black comedy about a filmmaker whose repressive government hasn't let him shoot any of his scripts for the past two decades. Inspired in part by 8 1/2, Federico Fellini's surreal film-within-a-film, Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine is a meditative, shrewdly humorous farce that features Bahman as a fictionalized version of himself who becomes obsessed with mortality in the wake of some weird close encounters with death, ultimately making his own funeral arrangements as research for a mockumentary until the whole process begins to really mess with his head. Bahman is a better director than he is an actor, and the movie is no work of art, but once you catch on to the filmmaker's abstruse sense of humor and sly resourcefulness as both a social satirist and a self-deprecating victim of his own anxieties, the film becomes increasingly amusing and entertaining. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine
New Yorker, 93 min., in Farsi w/English subtitles, not rated, VHS: $24.95, DVD: $29.95, Sept. 21 Volume 19, Issue 5
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine
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