Before Summer Ends

The Swiss director Maryam Goormaghtigh reinvigorates the summertime road-trip genre with this lyrical, keenly observed, acutely political comedy. It stars three thirtysomething Iranian men living in Paris, named Arash, Hossein, and Ashkan—nonprofessional actors playing versions of themselves—who take a sentimental journey two weeks before Arash moves back to Iran. Hossein, who is married, is a floppy-haired, ironic, artsy type; the earnest and solitary Ashkan works in photography; and Arash is a socially awkward, obese student who, as a teen-ager in Iran, deliberately gained weight to avoid military service—which he’s still hoping to avoid when he goes home. As the men motor through the French countryside en route to the Mediterranean Sea, they chat about Iran and France, tradition and freedom, memories and aspirations (heightened by visions of Iranian landscapes). They also meet people along the way—notably, two musicians, Charlotte and Michèle, whose presence prompts Ashkan’s dreams of romance. Then the idyll is shattered by new political circumstances. Goormaghtigh made the film with a few thousand dollars and one assistant, but her poised, ample images and her wryly tender regard for her characters give the film dramatic grandeur to match its global embrace. In Farsi and French. (Museum of the Moving Image, May 11)