Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)
So basically, you have two dash-mounted cameras, mounted centre, and pointing at the driver and the passenger. Their conversations are recorded as they drive through the streets of Tehran, and that's it.
A woman drives, and she picks up various people. Her son, women going to and from the mausoleum, her sister, a friend, and a prostitute. Kiarostami gives us ten episodes of this, and gradually we build a picture of this woman's social network, and the troubles she has with her son, and, by proxy, with her divorced husband. All the passengers - except for her son - are women, and as the film goes on, we get this amazing exploration of women's relations with each other, and with men. Men, be they dead, divorced, newly found and loved, recently broken-up, or there purely for a money/sex transaction.
Even though the cameras are static, the film never is. The car zooms through the busy streets of Tehran, and you have these constant, random compositions seen out the side windows. All sorts of buildings fly by, cars drive past or up to this frame, their bonnets poking into shot, and often you see other drivers in the next lane draw up to the window on their way past, looking in the window, and at the camera. You get this sense of urban activity, of movement, of negotiation, just by looking past the seated protagonists. There's this moment where she drives by a beautiful, landscaped park, only briefly, and you forget to read the subtitles.
It's this stripped back, focused cinema that really hits you. Her son, Amin, is this angry, abusive child. A child of divorce, he's this seething, raging ball of resentment. The first episode is basically him constantly arguing, shouting over his mother, abusing her and telling her to be quiet. In the episodes that feature him, you're just aching for him to be in a good mood so that the abuse and complaints will at least ease a little. There's no cutting away to ease the torment, you're totally at the mercy of the camera.
The thing is, you're also forced to look, to really look. To study the face in frame. Every detail, every nuance of expression. You also have to piece the narrative together from the random, discursive dialogue. This is a film of radical simplicity, and radical intimacy. (Top 50 time, peoples...)