BOTOX

Kaveh Mazaheri

1h 37m  •  2020

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Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023

Botulinum toxin is a neurotoxic protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. It is the most toxic protein known to date. Botox is the best-known trade name for the drug preparation that uses this toxin as its active ingredient.

Azar works in a cosmetic surgery practice, his sister Akram is autistic, and his brother Emad is learning German because he dreams of going to Germany.

They live outside the city and, at the suggestion of a local entrepreneur, plan to set up a cultivation of hallucinogenic "magic" mushrooms. The two sisters agree while Emad does not intend to undertake this investment.

The naturalness with which they organize this production is the same as they reveal when they will have to conceal the corpse of Emad, who fell from the roof following a push by Akram, often humiliated by his brother. They will conceal the body by burying it in ice careful to make all evidence disappear. Declaring their brother's disappearance, they will fake, through false phone calls, his departure for Germany.

The two sisters will have to live with the secret of death and the hallucinogen business.

An exciting debut from Iranian engineer Mazaheri, who exemplarily depicts the psychopathology of crime, with unpredictable surprises in the narrative in the story and the characters.

A noir played on a microcosm of alienation and imagination out of time; original at times amusing, especially the hallucinatory experience of the autistic sister in a fundamentally patriarchal society.

The initial choice to frame Akram as he passionately watches Beep beep and Wile E. Coyote ingeniously identifies the attraction to a character who is the living allegory of need: he is long, thin, sick, always hungry, poor, unfortunate, and friendless.

The choice of the ending built on the twist, declares the revenge of pathology over normality, with the cunning of those who survive with the natural and unpredictable instinct to self-preservation.

A tragic and sagacious comedy built on a murder committed more or less unconsciously and entrusted to the cultivation of mycetes with an absolutely amazing effect.

For extreme evils, extreme remedies, pushed to the utmost severity, are the most valid

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice