Producer: Dominique Dussault   Director: Pascal Plante   Screenplay: Pascal Plante   Cast: Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin, Elisabeth Locas, Natalie Tannous, Pierre Chagnon, Guy Thauvette and Maxwell McCabe-Lokos   Distributor: Utopia

Grade: B+

It’s the widespread public fascination with serial killers, rather than the killers themselves, that’s the focus of Pascal Plante’s chillingly austere courtroom drama.  The accused is Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), charged not only with brutally killing three girls, but broadcasting the murders to paying customers via a “Red Room,” a site on the darkest web.  The bodies were found buried in his backyard. 

The evidence against him is laid out in coolly methodical fashion by the prosecutor (Natalie Tannous) in her opening statement, while in his rebuttal the defense counsel (Pierre Chagnon) mounts an assault on its circumstantial character.  Francine Beaulieu (Elisabeth Locas), the mother of Camille, the one victim whose murder video has not yet been found, looks on anxiously from the gallery.

Watching from coveted chairs in the Montreal courtroom are two women who become central to the narrative.  One is Clémentine (Laurie Babin), a Chevalier groupie, an excitable, scraggly sort who’s travelled to the city after deciding that’s he’s innocent, an opinion she’s eager to share even when unasked.  The other is Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a striking, almost preternaturally poised fashion model who’s honed her hobby of playing internet poker to a fine, and lucrative, art.  She’s obsessed with the case, though it’s not obvious why and her glacial demeanor is totally at odds with Clémentine’s emotional volatility.

Nevertheless Kelly-Anne takes pity on the poor girl’s straitened circumstances—her scrambling to find a place to stay, her lack of money for meals.  She invites Clémentine to stay with her for the duration of the trial, and the two get to know one another in Kelly-Anne’s beautiful but sterile apartment, boasting a gorgeous view of the city but only minimal furnishings.  As host she introduces the girl to her companion, an AI-generated assistant of her own devising she calls Guinevere that becomes a source of amusement to them both, and watches in quiet horror as Clémentine calls in to a TV program in which a panel are discoursing on Chevalier’s obvious guilt, only to be treated with disdain.

Meanwhile Kelly-Anne’s focus on the trial becomes truly intense.  She’d already used her computer expertise to locate the Beaulieu home, as well as the footage of the two murders that was excluded from public view in court, which she shares with Clémentine, who points out that the murderer is masked and could be anyone.  She goes to court one day made up to look like Camille in her school uniform, catching Chevalier’s eye but so outraging the customers of the modeling firm that she’s fired.

And now she goes further.  She searches the dark web and discovers that an auction is planned for the footage of Camille’s murder.  She amasses as much as she can from her online poker games to earn a spot among the bidders, and then sets out to win the footage.  Whether she’ll succeed, and what she intends to do with the footage if she does, form the basis for the film’s tense final act.

Plante presents Clémentine, played by Babin with unaffected certainty, in simple strokes, but Kelly-Anne is another matter entirely.  Her motivations are kept obscure behind Gariépy’s icy, undemonstrative exterior as she delves further and further into the sinister recesses of the internet that could provide evidence to convict or exonerate Chevalier.  Is she a groupie of a different sort, a would-be crusader or simply an obsessive determined to know the truth while keeping it hidden?  Plante and Gariépy keep us guessing until the very end, and even then they offer no simple explanation for her character and actions. 

The result is both a cool, cerebral thriller that establishes a suspenseful vibe early on and maintains it to the end without resorting to cheap tricks, and an astutely observed study of a relationship that develops between two utterly different women.  Cinematographer Vincent Biron’s images possess a metallic sheen that sets off Laura Nhem’s elegant production design and Renee Sawtell’s costumes, which distinguish expertly between Kelly-Anne’s sophisticated wardrobe and Clémentine’s simple one.  Editor Jonah Malak accentuates Plante’s probingly deliberate pacing to enhance the suspense, while Dominique Plante’s eerie score adds to the unsettling mood.

This discreet, understated film is about a monster, but it unnerves you the old-fashioned way—with suggestion rather than the crude horror devices so common nowadays.

Producers: Mohammad Rasoulof, Amin Sadraei, Jean-Christophe Simon, Mani Tilgner and Rozita Hendijanian   Director: Mohammad Rasoulof    Screenplay: Mohammad Rasoulof   Cast: Missagh Zareh, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki, Niousha Akhshi, Reza Akhlaghirad, Amineh Mazrouie Arani, Mohammad Kamal Alavi and Shiva Ordooie   Distributor: Neon

Grade: B+

Mohammad Rasoulof’s latest film is itself a piece of history.  Made—as many films by Iranian dissidents must be—in secret, the footage was smuggled to Germany for post-production and the director, who’d previously suffered imprisonment and was faced with it again, escaped to the West and attended the film’s premiere at Cannes,  where it won a Special Jury Prize.

The film’s narrative is also about recent Iranian history.  It’s set during the 2022 demonstrations occasioned by the death while in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested by the morality police for improperly wearing the hijab.  Actual footage of the street protests and their brutal suppression is periodically included as news reports as the story unfolds.

And yet “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” though inextricably tied to Iranian politics, is essentially a domestic drama that plays out, until the final reel, largely within a Tehran apartment, where Iman (Missagh Zareh) lives with his wife Nahmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). 

Iman has just been promoted to the position of investigative judge, a position which clearly emphasizes the second aspect of the title over the first.  Iman is distressed over being instructed to sign a death warrant for a young man without even having met him, but his superior Ghaderi (Reza Akhlaghirad) assures him that this is what’s expected, and as a pious supporter of the regime he eventually complies.

Iman is also unnerved when Ghaderi gives him a pistol for protection.  He stores it carefully in a drawer in the bedroom he shares with Nahmeh each night.

Nahmeh is utterly supportive of her husband.  She impresses upon the girls that they must never do anything that could undermine the family’s reputation and his position.  But when their friend and classmate Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) gets swept up in the demonstrations and severely injured, they beg Nahmeh to help her, and though initially hesitant, she becomes more and more involved, even as Iman’s role in the mistreatment of those arrested grows.  The divisions in the family increase as Nahmeh becomes more outspoken and Iman more doctrinaire and implacable.

The domestic tension explodes when Iman’s gun disappears and he’s desperate to find it.  He suspects his wife and daughters, and at Ghaderi’s suggestion even enlists a skilled interrogator, Alireza (played by an actor who prefers to remain anonymous—a fact that itself indicates the precarious situation of those who participate in films critical of the government)—to question them using his regular techniques.  When that fails, Iman suddenly decides to take the family to his remote childhood home.  It turns out to be an eventful trip, not only because of a couple they meet along the way but because of the extremes to which Iman will go to get answers and the women to save themselves from his wrath.

The film meticulously—some would say excessively so, as it runs nearly three hours—follows the disintegration of a family as the cruelty of a tyrannical regime, which until now they’ve dealt with only at a safe remove, directly enters their lives and parents and children grow further and further apart.  The last act, it must be admitted, can be criticized for being overly protracted and melodramatic, and the end—which returns to cellphone footage—for seeming too hopeful about the effect that demonstrations might have on the government.

But “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is, after all, a film of political protest, and given the circumstances under which it was made, one can easily make allowances for what might otherwise be seen as flaws.  The cast is certainly committed down the line, with Golestani and Zareh especially impressive in showing their characters’ transformations, while production designer Amir Panahifar and cinematographer Pooyan Aghababaei have worked wonders under stringent conditions.  Andrew Bird’s editing grows slacker in the final act, after the family has left Tehran, and Karzan Mahmood’s score leaves little impression.  But one’s left with enormous admiration that this lacerating portrait of contemporary Iran was made at all.

Incidentally, as an introductory caption explains, the sacred fig, or ficus religiosa, is “a tree with an unusual life cycle.  Its seeds, contained in bird droppings, fall on other trees.  Aerial roots spring up and grow down to the floor.  Then, the branches wrap around the host tree and strangle it.  Finally, the sacred fig stands on its own.”  So the title represents a metaphor that can be understood in a variety of ways—some indicating dominance, others triumphant resistance.  Each viewer will interpret its meaning in his own way.