Another controlled outpouring of lyricism, a dribble here, a splash there, from the maker of The Color of Paradise, Majid Majidi. The first half -- or more -- is filled with the sights and sounds of a construction site in urban Iran, with no gussying-up through photographic frill or musical mood: a bare shell of a building around an open courtyard, a hive of puttery activity almost dreamlike in its lack of purpose and accomplishment, each worker (sometimes a pair) on an individual assignment, shovelling debris, laying bricks, lugging sacks of cement. The unsmiling, gruff, harried, but fundamentally decent foreman on the project is a rich repository of sights and sounds unto himself. And needless to add, it is next to inconceivable for an American film to immerse you so completely in a job of manual labor (even, for instance, in John Turturro's salute to the carpentry trade, Mac). You have to go to exotic extremes to find anything so mundane. There is (not to worry) a storyline, too, one that revolves around the runty young son, never opening his mouth, who fills in for an injured Afghan illegal immigrant: so inept at the manly tasks of his father that he is shifted instead to the catering job previously held by a chipper but quick-fisted youth, who at first merely resents his replacement, then seethes with envy over the replacement's superior aptitude for the job. It is no surprise (to us) that "he," the replacement, turns out to be a she in disguise, but the moment of revelation, in the prying eyes of her rival, is beautifully visualized: a magical silhouette of literally letting her hair down and transforming her envious rival -- presto-change-o -- into a smitten suitor. (The hair will become the material of poetry: when the girl vanishes from the site without a trace, the suitor finds a hairpin in her favorite hideaway, with a single hair in it, and the revelatory window is now overgrown with a vine.) The last half -- or less -- regrettably gets away from the work site, for an overextended, repetitive, and unpersuasive demonstration of mad love, Iranian-style. With Hossein Abedini, Mohammad Amir Naji, Zahra Bahrami. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd