Black Rabbit, White Rabbit

I’m all in for inventiveness in filmmaking, especially in days like these, where it seems that endless sequels, reboots and franchise offerings have come to dominate the domestic movie industry. However, at the same time, that laudable sense of innovation needs to work, too, and, in the case of this latest feature from writer-director Shahram Mokri, that’s true but only to a certain extent. In what is undoubtedly one of the most unusual films I have seen in some time, the filmmaker plays with the concept of storytelling, presenting a project in which a domestic drama/thriller plays out amidst the efforts of a movie production company to make a picture of that same story, with reality and fantasy curiously overlapping and intertwining. That story involves three primary story threads that become interconnected as well, including one in which a woman severely injured in a mysterious car accident (Hasti Mohammai) has developed the ability to affect the performance of physical objects; one involving a movie prop master (Babak Karimi) who struggles with issues related to what he believes is a cursed stage revolver; and one in which an eager casting assistant (Kibriyo Dilyobova) desperately seeks an opportunity to make an on-screen appearance, despite strong objections from her boss/mother and an apparent lack of any appreciable talent of her own. These scenarios are further “enhanced” by the inclusion of surreal elements, such as the periodic appearance of human-sized rabbits that symbolically represent the characters and physical objects that appear to have the ability to move and silently communicate with one another. And, collectively, these qualities combine to deal with various narrative themes, most notably the notion of “what goes around comes around.” Admittedly, it’s all very intriguing for about an hour or so, but then the director seems to lose control of the room, allowing his considerable imagination to take over in ways that make the picture difficult to fol...