21/10/2022 - Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi’s latest is a twist-laden doppelgänger thriller, following two warring families at opposite points on the class spectrum

If we’re in the habit of generalising about national cinemas, Mani Haghighi’s work sits in an uncertain space. Two details surrounding him stand out: he excels at genre compared to his Iranian colleagues, who staunchly favour documentary realism; and also, he partially grew up and enjoyed a successful academic career (philosophy, natch) in Canada. He retains Canadian dual citizenship but now resides in Iran (where he unfortunately has also recently suffered from the legal and censorship issues that have plagued his compatriots like Jafar Panahi – he was prevented from boarding an inbound plane to present this very film at BFI London). What’s more, he’s a descendant of the eminent artistic Golestan clan in Iran and has twice collaborated with Asghar Farhadi. His previous movie, the Golden Bear-competing Pig, followed a serial killer slaying famous Iranian directors – all of these career credentials have clearly produced a zesty, maybe implacable mix.

What’s initially striking about his latest thriller, the sleek Subtraction [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which premiered at Toronto before showing at BFI London, is its lack of overt political content: it’s not so much that it could be transplanted to anywhere else in the world, as that the authoritarian Iranian state, which looms especially large in its urban populace’s lives, isn’t very prevalent in the foreground, particularly at a time when international viewers who’ve followed the recent female-galvanised civil unrest would be most sensitised to it. Subtraction is instead about how different units of people, who possess fuller agency, function in a class society, although its focus on secrecy and implication conversely makes it feel very Iranian, as well as authentically Hitchcockian.

It’s awkward to unveil a partial plot summary, as there’s a jolting succession of reveals that comprise its first act. But it must be known that Subtraction is a tale of doppelgängers and doubles, played deadly straight with nary a self-conscious wink or hint of camp – Haghighi pulls off a tonal coup in his direction, giving this the clarity of a waking nightmare. Like Farhadi’s A Separation and The Past [+see also:
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film profile], it alights on two separate nuclear families brought together through an escalating array of coincidences and impulsive actions, only here, they are literally played by the same two actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh.

When driving instructor Farzaneh (Alidoosti), struggling through her third trimester of pregnancy whilst she follows her doctor’s orders to come off strong antidepressants, notices her husband Jalal (Mohammadzadeh) boarding a public bus to an upmarket apartment block, she assumes an affair. But through incorporating her father-in-law (Ali Bagheri) in quite a far-fetched spying scheme, she discovers both that this is indeed someone else, a well-off middle manager who looks identical to her husband, as well as the shocking unveiling of his own wife. A fatalistic stand-off ensues, where the couples edge closer to becoming romantically entwined, and also, in more laboured plotting, conspire together to quash an assault accusation stemming from the middle-class husband’s job.

Haghighi’s Canadian heritage is important to cite given Subtraction’s similarity to Denis Villeneuve’s great Enemy [+see also:
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film profile] (from the Quebecois director’s pre-sci-fi blockbuster era), with an analogue to its queasy surrealism to be found in the fact that we see Tehran under constant rain – one of the only clues to grasping the potential reality the film takes place in, given the screenplay clearly establishes that there’s no subjective distortion or unreliable narrators at play. Subtraction perhaps isn’t distinctive enough to truly recommend itself amidst the glut of genre content on screens of all sizes, but grants us an elegant, macabre experience that work from this region seldom offers.

Subtraction is a co-production by Iran and France, staged by Majid Film Production and Films Boutique Production. Its world sales are courtesy of Films Boutique.