The slow, endless Iranian art films, so omnipresent in film festivals since the 80s, are by now, an either love it or hate it proposition. I now fall into the hate it category, jaded and bored by their sheer numbers, similarity of themes, characters, boring landscapes, and slow pace.

However, I do still see a couple every year to confirm, or review my perception of them. Besides, one can't judge all Iranian art films in a certain light, though the art form does tend to make the viewer take those extreme positions. So, I saw this film (called "Beautiful City")here - the name of the juvenile detention center the main character comes from. I found it entertaining and fresh, though the drab scenery and sameness of themes, landscapes, and characters are there.

It's an interesting (and again, entertaining, not endless like most) look at parts of Iranian society not often shown. These include delinquent youth, drug dealers and their hoods, the very negotiable (economically and religiously) Islamic death penalty, and prostitution on various levels.

I wonder whether films like this are shown in Iran? Of course, the masses would never run to see this movie. And obviously, all these Iranian films are intended for foreign (mostly western viewing), particularly at festivals. But I wonder whether anybody can just show up at a cinema and see it, or is it shown at semi-private showings for a select audience. If it is, how can this distorted Islamic government continue?

Anyway, that's the most interesting point of the film. It shows (whether true or not) that the government in Iran is not that Islamic, not that intolerant, somewhat democratic. But the society, under those black clothes, and automatic "God is great" messages, is as corrupt as the world's most corrupt, and more purely capitalistic than the social democratic capitalism we have today.

In the film, everything, from death sentences to pardons, from marriages to an opportunity for a life-saving medical operation, not to mention drugs and people, can be bought and sold with Tomans (Iranian cash).

"Beautiful City (Shah-re ziba)" is an intense, universal story of love and death within societal strictures, as much as stories by Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Henry James, Edith Wharton, I.B. Singer or O. Henry, etc. etc. It just happens that here love from parents, children, siblings, friends, spouses and suitors has to find an outlet within Islamic law as practiced in contemporary Iran so they are silhouetted against extreme options.

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi is as observant of the power of human emotions as those masters in letting the story and characters unfold slowly like an onion. Each becomes more complex than we see at first; each has reasons motivated by strong feelings that teeter between sacrifice and fulfillment.

All the characters have choices to make - and feelings they cannot choose to control. A father's grief is as implacable as the undying love of his daughter's boyfriend. A mismatched couple (a spirited Taraneh Alidoosti as the woman "Firouzeh") falls in love without ever touching or exchanging an endearment (and completely enclosed in clothes, as a lesson to Western cinema). All know that if they compromise they will be diminished or something irretrievable will be lost. As each must ask just how far to go for love, they are trapped as much by human nature as by the stringent details of Islamic law (with resonance for any country that has legal revenge through the death penalty).

The character who takes over the heart of the film is a familiar figure in every culture - the confident negotiator who could talk the devil out of whatever, with charm, wile and persistence. A thief, he is at equal ease creatively debating with his jailer as with an imam. But in a short period of time this incipient "Milo Minderbinder" (as in "Catch 22") dramatically learns that the mysteries of the human soul may be beyond even his bargaining. Striving to save his best friend's life and finding unexpected ramifications whatever he does, young Babak Ansari as "A'la" grows before our eyes.

None of the characters is a stereotype. The jailer is like a sympathetic social worker. The imam is very practical about life (though oddly his quoting of Koranic verses aren't translated in the subtitles). The sister stands up to abuse. The teenage murderers acted out of deep love. Even the strict, abusive father is seen as crazed with a sorrow he cannot let go. So there are no Hollywood endings to their lives.

The look of the film seems like faded 1940's Hollywood Technicolor, with a bluish tinge, making it look old fashioned, even as we see a Nike cap and other miscellany of modern culture among the evocative atmosphere of crowded jails, rooms and mosques. The familiar issues of drug addiction, poverty, domestic abuse, etc. that complicate love are universal beyond the head scarves and unfamiliar architecture.

The English subtitles are always legible, turning from white to yellow against light backgrounds.

In the west, there are occasional cries for so-called "victim's justice", where the person who suffers from a crime has a say in the treatment of the criminal: this deceptively simple film looks at how such a system works where it's actually practiced, under Islamic law in Iran. At first, the movie's set-up seems primitive, and there seems to be undue absence of emphasis on the crime itself: the immediately sympathetic characters all claim that their friend, a murderer, "doesn't deserve to die", but this is merely asserted and never proved. But as the film proceeds, it becomes clear that this is not the point: instead we see how, with the final verdict put in the hands of the dead person's father, responsibility for the killer's fate in passed onto those (both the father and also those who must plead with him for clemency) who cannot deal with it, and who will find no closure through being asked to take it on. The film's depiction of the role of women in an Islamic society is also perceptive and interesting. The subtle ending perfectly concludes a quiet tragedy that ultimately delivers more than is promised at the start.