Few were the films that I saw at this year's Athens International Film Festival and I will remember for a long time (some for good reason and others for draining the life out of me, that's for sure). Melbourne, the second Iranian film that I watched this past week fortunately belongs to the first kind.
Despite its title, the film is not Australian and it doesn't even take place in Melbourne. Instead the title is a metaphor for the realization of the leading couple's dream. The opening credits appear in between scenes of clothes that are being vacuum-sealed into plastic bags: a scene that is chilling if you already know the outcome. When we first meet Amir (A Separation's once again excellent Peyman Moaadi) and Sara (Negar Javaherian) they are packing frantically in their apartment as in a few hours' time they are about to move to Melbourne for studies. Among the havoc of packing, the coming and going of people, the making calls for final arrangements and the waiting for the pawnbroker to take their largest furniture (all normal things for a couple that is about to make a big life change) we gather information about the protagonists and their relationship both with each other and with their friends and family. 
Soon, however, everything is about to change (spoilers are coming your way). While Amir and Sara are preparing the last details of their journey we find out that a baby is sleeping in their bed. The baby isn't theirs but the neighbour's next door. Their nanny has chosen this nothing-but-busy day to leave the baby with the couple for supposedly just one hour but she has been missing for more than three.
When Amir goes in the bedroom to take some stuff, he notices something strange: the baby is not breathing. In fact it has been dead for some time. And here is where the trouble starts: did this happen under their supervision? Are they responsible for the loss of a little baby? And what do they do now?
Things get out of balance and the couple -and its integrity- is put under the test. Melbourne gives the audience feelings of anxiety and frustration. It puts us in a position of thinking "what if something like this happened to me?" And yet, the film is this kind of thriller that makes you want to shout at the protagonists to just do the right thing and stop playing around and making one wrong decision after the other. Thankfully, both Moaadi and Javaherian are excellent in their craft and keep us on the edge of our seats for the whole cinematic journey, hoping that they will somehow make it work.
Melbourne was shown on the last day of the AIFF, Sunday October 4th.
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