Signals: How To Survive... screening - review - FISH AND CAT (Mahi va gorbeh) by Shahram Mokri

Horror and drama blend in naturally and in a compelling way in Shahram Mokri’s feature film. Taking place in the outskirts of Iran, its starting point is a restaurant where freaky things seem to be happening. In fact, the film opens up with a title card that tells the story of one particular restaurant that was closed down and was rumoured to be serving its customers human meat.

This disturbing premise introduces instantly the chilling factor and sinister atmosphere that runs throughout the film. Nevertheless, it is a misleading one, and it does not take long for the viewer to realise that Fish and Cat is a much more ambitious and even ultimately rewarding experience. The plot itself is simple, and it essentially deals with two owners of a dodgy restaurant and their encounters with their neighbours, who are camping out beside them for a kite festival. But as the film progresses, the dramatic aspects of the story are deepened and we get to explore individual intimate situations of each of the characters that the camera chooses to follow.

This conveys the strength of the approach, both stylistically and narratively. Because Morki’s experiment also works due to his ambitious idea of making a feature film of around two hours in length in a single take. This means that the camera follows the characters and nothing is edited – an approach that must have taken a long time to plan out but nevertheless remarkably never feels artificially constructed and flows in an admirably and praiseworthy fluid way. The photography, in fact, is great and there are never smudges or signs of imperfections despite the fact that Mokri doesn’t make his life easier for himself by also tampering with time and revealing a curious flashback without intercuts. What is more is that by utilising this approach, Mokri also differentiates this film from the multiple character driven storylines ala Crash, Traffic and Magnolia that may make for an entertaining and even engaging watch but are currently all starting to look the same.

Of course, there is also a lot of tension in the film that is able to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. This suspense is often verbal and atmospheric, as there is no real gore and the film lacks the visual explicit attack on the viewers that are easily identified with slasher films and horror features. Basically, this is the ultimate exercise in art-house horror and a wonderfully original one at that.

Even when the pace occasionally slows down, or when the stylistic technique employed in the making of the film takes over the narrative, there is always something on an emotional or psychological level to interest the viewer. Fish and Cat is hence attention grabbing from start to finish and offers a fresh take on the blending of two different genres by making use of an approach that seems to not only attract its audience magnetically but also ends up making them feel actively involved in the action taking place on the screen by defying familiar cinematic conventionalities.