A soldier stands guard on a barren beach while his colleague sleeps on a bunk bed on a sand dune. Suddenly a plane flies overhead and a heavy wooden box falls out of the sky on a parachute. Inside there's nothing but a tiny cardboard ballot box. Welcome to Election Day, Iranian style.
In writer-director Babak Payami's comedy, absurdity reigns. Traffic lights operate in the middle of the desert, women don't know who they're voting for because they're not permitted to look at photos of "unknown men", and the female election agent (Abdi) has to convince her soldier escort (Abidi) that forcing reluctant voters to choose a candidate at gun point probably isn't the best way to keep democracy alive.
Following his characters on a frenzied road trip through the desert, Payami tries to raise some serious issues about Iran's electoral process, but the result is a film that's about as subtle as a party political broadcast. Stretching the script's surreal vignettes until they lose all their humour, "Secret Ballot" ends up with nowhere to go and so replays its theme with all the monotony of a scratched record.
Hammering home his political message - democracy is a blessing, but it has to be implemented slowly - Payami squanders his vision of a Kafka-esque world in which people believe that "whoever sent the orders knows what's best".
As a result, "Secret Ballot" becomes less "Waiting for Godot" and more waiting for the sermon to stop. And that's never a good thing for either comedy or drama.
In Farsi with English subtitles.
Secret Ballot (Raye Makhfi) (2002)
