“Det” Means Girl

Jalili’s fourth completed feature typically deals with the plight of the young (here, a teenager working in a Tehran workers’ hostel, struggling to find cash for medical treatment for his mysteriously paralysed little sister) in a style that’s at once realistic and impressionistic. The surreal aural collage over the opening credits presages the poetic evocation of the world’s myriad sights, sounds, opinions, remedies, etc, while the lucid account of the conflict between ancient and modern, science and superstition, city and country, faith and despair, ensures that this moving story never descends into mawkish melodrama.