Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine

This semi-autobiographical examination of mortality, political pressure and social ritual offers further evidence if Iranian cinema's refelxivity. Writer/director Farmanara takes the lead as a hangdog depressive director banned from shooting for two decades. Deciding to film his own funeral - his heart's not too reliable - he soon gets caught in a web of fiction/reality narratives involving assassinated intellectuals, dead babies on car seats and talking birds. Some striking images of isolation and abandonment, a clear love of nature and an elegiac sense of lost time all help. It's drily humorous too - Nanni Moretti-style - and clearly sincere, but the three-act structure sometimes drags and the tone is uneven.