Universal Language: People's choice at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Image / Supplied
Universal Language: People's choice at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Image / Supplied
Review by Sarah Watt
Sarah reviewed for the Sunday Star Times until 2019. After a career change to secondary school teaching, she now she works in alternative education with our most disadvantaged rangatahi.
Universal Language, directed by Matthew Rankin, is in cinemas now.
Winner of an audience award in the Cannes Film Festival’s left-field Directors’ Fortnight, Universal Language is a quirky, surreal comedy-drama that takes place in an alternate version of the city of Winnipeg, Canada, where Persian is the primary language alongsideFrench. It feels like the sweetly esoteric work of Palestinian director Elia Suleiman (particularly It Must Be Heaven) meets Wes Anderson (his whole oeuvre), with a snowy touch of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo.
It’s beautifully staged, gorgeously performed, and gently funny, but so off the beaten cinematic path that it’s tricky to universally recommend.
It’s the deadpan tale of ordinary folks who encounter a possible hoard of cash frozen under ice. In one of several narrative threads, sisters Negin and Nazgol quest for a tool to smash the ice so they can claim the cash and buy their classmate Omid a new pair of glasses. As the plucky children begin their mission to help their friend, boring tour guide Massoud also has designs on the money. Meanwhile, a third storyline sees stranger Matthew (Canadian director and Iranian film cinéaste Matthew Rankin) quit his job and voyage west to visit his mother.
After his debut surrealist comedy The Twentieth Century, Rankin co-wrote the darkly funny script with Iranian-Canadians Pirouz Nemati (who plays Massoud) and Ila Firouzabadi, and he directs in a way that occasionally defies all the “rules” of sensible cinematography.
The effect may be a little hard to click into, but it’s striking, imaginative, and strangely heartwarming.
