Cannes 2022: Holy Spider is a bold piece of filmmaking by filmmaker Ali Abbasi

Iranian-Danish Filmmaker, Ali Abbasi is no stranger to the Cannes festival , his genre bending drama Border won in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival in 2018. Abbasi who has been working on the story for a decade, took inspiration from true events in 2000 and 2001, when Saeed Hanaei, an unhinged killer went on a rampage and killed 16 sex workers in an Iranian city. Holy Spider unfolds in Mashhad, a holy city, the second largest in the religiously conservative Iran, where sex work is illegal. Leading a seemingly normal life with a wife and three children, Saeed Hanaei is a psychopath in a construction worker’s clothing. The veneer of his quotidian life is broken when he cruises at night to pick up street walkers after sending his family to the safety of his in-laws. He brings these women home under the pretense of sex in exchange for money but proceeds to strangle them to death. In his eyes, they are immoral women and he’s doing god’s duty of cleansing the streets of Mashhad. He has the habit of calling up an investigative journalist after every murder, directing him to where he dumped the dead bodies. The film opens in a messy kitchen where a bare-breasted woman puts on makeup and lipstick for a night out. As she bids goodbye to her child and steps out on the street, it quickly becomes clear she’s a prostitute, providing sex work to men in their homes when their family is away or fellating them in their cars, to earn a living. Scenes like these, otherwise shocking in an Iranian movie, are possible in Holy Spider because Ali Abbasi is relieved of the obligations prescribed by the Iranian morality police since the film has bare minimum association with Iran. Abbasi couldn’t get permission to shoot in Iran, so a Jordanian city is a stand-in for Mashhad. With the city blurred away in the background, featuring only desolate streets and nondescript squares, Mashhad itself is not a significant feature in the film. Abbasi makes it up with electrifying momentum in the script, propelled by Mehdi Bajestani who plays the titular character, the unrepentant killer Saeed Hanaei with beady eyes and greasy beard. Zahra Amir Ebrahimi is the short hair sporting, chain smoking, jeans-under-the-burka kind of investigative journalist who navigates the treacherously murky bureaucracy to track the serial killer and bring him to justice in a society where misogyny is as commonplace as saffron on the dinner table. The film shifts its perspective from sex-worker to the killer to the journalist, played to affecting dynamism and piercing stare by Ebrahimi. By making her alone in the battle to bring the killer to justice, the film pits Rahimi against the system that is at once oppressive to women and views them as secondary citizens. Holy Spider’s unwavering focus in showing the psyche of an unremorseful killer makes the film a gritty watch. The camera lingers - a little too close for comfort - to Saeed face as much as it does the victim who suffer brutal sometimes bloody death, eyes and mouth wide open, gasping for breath with broken windpipes. Thanks to Nadim Carlsen’s cinematography, the foreboding streets in the film, where dangers lurk, remain an unforgettable detail. As the film focus shifts after Saeed is caught, he’s on the verge of being proclaimed a national hero, he was only cleansing the streets of immoral women, after all. Shockingly enough, now the son is quite willing to take up the mantle his father may soon leave behind. Holy Spider is a bold piece of filmmaking by an audacious director and its treatment of the subject matter is forthright that gives it the feel of an edge of the seat Persian noir. At the same time, it lacks the classic hallmarks of Iranian filmmaking - rich and nuanced storytelling, packed with details. If not for the climax, the film would have fallen into the irredeemable trap of running the risk of painting Saeed as a martyr. Having said that, it’s precisely due to the daring portrayal of a society where egregious religious morals trump human rights, Holy Spider deserves to be watched. Prathap Nair is an independent culture features writer based in Germany. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.