A three-hour film better be pretty good and I went into this drama by Saeed Roustayi (Just 6.5 (2019)) well-caffeinated and expecting to be immersed in Iranian life.

The synopsis for the film likened it to Asghar Farhadi, which is a high expectation, and I wasn’t disappointed with the amount of detail and domestic drama in this story of a dysfunctional family.

Esmail (Saeed Poursamimi) is the 80-year-old father of a family of four sons and one daughter, Leila (Taraneh Alidoosti). They are all in their 40s and none of them have been particularly successful in life. For the father, the most important thing for him is status and when the patriarch of his family dies, he wants more than anything to be named his successor.

Son Alireza (Navid Mohammadzadeh who has been in many films I have loved) has just lost his job when the factory he works at closes down without having paid wages for months. The workers riot but he turns tail and runs when it becomes violent. His brothers are not much better, getting sucked into fraudulent get rich quick schemes and squabbling. They are variously cowardly, vain, greedy and heartless.

Leila, as the only daughter, is treated as cook, cleaner and maid by her family. She thinks she’s the only one that really understands how to get ahead and tries to convince her brothers to join her in a legitimate business venture to buy a shop. It doesn’t go according to plan when their father insists on using the money to ensure he is crowned the next patriarch of the family, a moment of glory that he has wanted all his life. There becomes something of a repeated theme of Ponzi-like schemes as a socially-legitimate way to get ahead.

Rather than being the expected morality tale about a woman who is smarter than her family and doesn’t get listened to, this is a much more complex look at dysfunction in a family and the difficulties of achieving any kind of personal or professional success when your upbringing has been essentially flawed. Leila is not the hero we at first think she is and is perhaps just as flawed as her brothers.

There are some great moments – the wedding and Esmail’s moment of glory stands out – and a thread of humour and realness in the interactions between the siblings helps lighten what is a pretty sad tale. Alidoosti and Mohammadzadeh are particularly good (as you’d expect) and Poursamimi is the perfect foil.

I was expecting some kind of denouement or sting in the tail as you often get with a Farhadi and this does definitely have pathos that you sit with but it didn’t feel as enlightening as it should have been.

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