Quirky, absurdist, brilliant, and irresistible.
It is a freezing cold winter in Winnipeg Canada. Two children, Negin and Nazgol, find money frozen in the ice on the ground. Wanting to extract it they enlist the help of a passing stranger, who then takes the money for himself. Meanwhile, Massoud is leading a tourist group around on a strange tour of the city, while in Quebec, Matthew is disillusioned with his government job and resigns to return to Winnipeg. These three stories will somehow intersect. And the whole narrative is told mostly in Persian.
Director and writer Matthew Rankin has crafted an absurdist, gently comedic, and quirkily moving, feature. Co-written by Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati, and Rankin, Universal Language is a work of quiet genius.
Louisa Schabas as production designer has given us a dream-like world half-way between Winnipeg and Tehran. Buildings are mostly walls with few windows. Shops are set up like stalls at a school fete. Snow is everywhere, and cars are nowhere, except out on the freeway. And although somewhat brutalist in look, the design contains whimsy and charm, almost like a theatre set, adding to the sense of placelessness and slight unreality.
Editor Xi Feng and cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko have worked together to create a visually surprising film which delivers aesthetic engagement at every moment.
Rankin himself stars as Matthew, alongside Nemati as Massoud. Young actors Rojina Esmaeili and Saba Vahedyousefi star as Nagin and Nazgol respectively. Every small role is a cameo, with too many to mention. Suffice to say, imaginative casting is a major reason why this film works so well. Every performance is a mini-masterpiece.
Off-centre, poignant, funny, and bizarrely engaging, Universal Language has already garnered a swag of awards including at Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver Film Festivals, and the Audience Award at Director’s Week at Cannes. Now it’s Adelaide’s turn to relish this innovative, brave, and utterly delightful work of cinema.
Universal Language opens this Thursday.
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