This idiosyncratic drama from Iran begins as a jeep winds through the
hills of Kurdistan, containing an engineer (Behzad Dourani) and his two
assistants (whom we never see) as they search for a small village in the
mountains. When they arrive, they are greeted by a young boy, who shows
them a place they can stay and guides the engineer to the home of an
old woman (also never seen) who seems to be dying. No one is sure what
the engineer and his men are doing there; some locals think he's keeping
watch of the old woman and wants to purchase her land when she dies,
while others think he could be an archeologist searching for rare
artifacts. Meanwhile, the engineer spends his days exploring the village
and the people who live there -- most of them women, with the men away
at jobs that occupy them night and day for several months out of the
year.
He also stays in touch with the boy, who watches over the old
woman's health while keeping up with his schoolwork, working on his
family's farm, and helping his mother with the household chores.
Meanwhile, the engineer periodically gets calls on his cellular phone,
which require him to drive to a graveyard on a hill to receive the call
(most, however, are wrong numbers), while making contact with a man
digging a deep hole (also unseen) and a girl in the village who milk's
cows which are kept in a dark basement. Concentrating on what we don't
see as often as what we do, Le Vent Nous Emportera bears the distinctive
stamp of director
Abbas Kiarostami and was embraced by critics in its screening at the 1999 Venice Film Festival.
