“Even a ramshackle Asgari is worth a watch, and with an excellent performance and strong direction A Bit of Light tips the balance towards the positive.”

“In this country, when you wake up you don’t know if you’ll be alive at night.”

On February 28th the US started bombing Iran. That’s only six months ago. This is relevant to Ali Asgari’s latest film, the sober suicide drama A Bit of Light, because of a running joke of sarcastic remarks the characters make about the war, and US President Donald Trump in particular (“Trump would never lie“). It makes the film very topical, but it also shows that Asgari must have put this film together rather quickly. And that can be felt. While the film, mainly consisting of a string of conversations between the protagonist and his siblings, doesn’t look like the most complicated production, something is missing. Is it the bite of his Locarno winner Terrestrial Verses, the urgency of Until Tomorrow, the playfulness of Divine Comedy? Whatever it is, A Bit of Light feels somewhat like filler in Asgari’s filmography, a work that seems born out of an urge to address Iran’s recent history, a rushed project that doesn’t hit as hard as the director perhaps hoped it would.

After losing his clinic and his license as a doctor for simply, and secretly, helping injured protesters (the Hippocratic Oath apparently means nothing in Iran), a disillusioned Arash has made a decision: he will end his life. By the start of the film, he has already told his brother Maziar, who is understandably in shock and tries to talk him out of it. But Arash has made up his mind: he will spend the rest of the day preparing his sisters Mahsa and Massi, and then his mother, for his impending death. But the path through his family members is twisty, with side quests involving former patients and underground plays, and at each and every turn his resolve about suicide is waning. Is there perhaps, even in a country where one is caught between a hammer and an anvil, still something to live for?

Criticism of the screenplay aside, Asgari remains a director with a fine sense of mise-en-scène. The compositional work is strong throughout, and the camera pans and zooms at the appropriate moments, including a powerful final focus on Arash as he seemingly makes the decision that life is worth living after all. There is ambiguity in the ending, as Arash hasn’t been able to bring himself to tell his mother about his suicide plans, but at least to this viewer the glass looks half full. The scene is made all the more potent by Misagh Zareh’s impressive central performance. Probably best known for his role as the father in Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Zareh excels equally in conveying Arash’s stern resolve and also in letting doubt creep into his character. Without much fanfare the actor delivers one of the finest male performances of the year. He puts just enough in his gaze to lead the audience into his mind, but with just enough doubt to keep you guessing. When Arash visits his sister, a yoga teacher, he observes a bunch of women lying flat on their backs on the yoga mats, and a mixture of sadness and anger in his face makes you wonder if the image reminds him of the sinister aftermath of protests that rocked Iran at the start of the year. It is moments like these that make A Bit of Light worthwhile, even though there are several scenes that add little to the story, and the Trump jokes feel shoehorned in. It’s definitely not a highlight in the Iranian director’s career, which makes it all the more ironic that this is the film that lands him in Competition. Even more so because it follows the same structure as last year’s Divine Comedy, a better and more coherent film. But still, even a ramshackle Asgari is worth a watch, and with an excellent performance and strong direction A Bit of Light tips the balance towards the positive.