OPENS JUNE 11, CERT 12A, 95 MINS
Decrepit, poverty-stricken villages. Searing desert heat. Bonkers religious edicts, repressed women, and lots of shouting. Yes, it’s our Iranian movie of the month. And yet this, the third film from writer-director Babak Payami (Secret Ballot), certainly has the edge on the Kiarostamis and Makhmalbafs. For a start, there’s the knockout central conceit: a soulful Executioner (real-life kung-fu champ Narouli) must marry, deflower and then execute a condemned Virgin (Moghaddam). Then there’s the black humour: “It must be written somewhere,” shrugs a village elder lazily when his religious authority is questioned. Plus there’s a hint of genre decadence here: Payami (who studied film in Toronto) has created an Iranian western, with the Executioner serving as a hired gun for local autocrat Haji, who later turns on his rebellious prot