I definitely needed to revisit the Iranian New Wave given all that's been happening in the world and my own life. This story is the first of Kiarostami's "Koker Trilogy" of movies that revolve around Koker, Iran. This first movie is a straight-forward neorealist film involving the protagonist trying to return the homework journal of his friend so that he does not get kicked out of school by his hard-ass teacher. There is no experimentation with the style here so I will talk mostly about the movie.
This movie is one of the last of Kiarostami's kid films where the protagonists are children and it is like a book-end of his second feature film The Traveler (1974). In the earlier film it was an evil little hellion that goes around looking for people to scam and goes on a journey only to get his poetic justice in the end. In this film it is a much more forthright kid who goes all over the province where he lives to find his school friend and return the book he picked up by mistake and the film also ends with poetic justice, but in a different way. Both films have jackass families, but this film sees the protagonist do right despite this while The Traveler's protagonist does the wrong thing. Where is the Friend's House? makes you have to watch until the very end for the satisfying pay-off and just goes to show the beautiful humanism of the Iranian New Wave cinema at this time. A good ending can just make a film!
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