The problem with being “son of” (or “daughter of”, for that matter) is that comparison is inevitable. It took Panah Panahi to wait until he was well into his thirties to finally make his first feature film and bet on stepping out of the shadow of his acclaimed filmmaker father. On the way !, nominated for the Camera d’or at Cannes in 2021, is therefore an act of emancipation for the son of the great Jafar Panahi, icon of the Iranian new wave. The result, more than promising, bodes well for a flourishing career.
Panahi junior puts us in the car of a completely chaotic Iranian family. A small side Taxi Tehran of Panahi father? Yes, that’s for sure, but not too much is needed. In the passenger compartment, we discover a father with a plastered leg and a biting humour, a youngest son on the verge of hyperactivity, an almost mute eldest son and a mother hen who serves as family cement. This escapade, wild as a foul-mouthed clown, swallows the miles to get the eldest out of the country while ensuring that the youngest does not suspect this final departure. Ah, the lie, this pillar of education!
Melancholic piano music is heard on a white background. The fingers of a child playing the melody on drawn keys appear, and we already imagine a dreamy toddler who will never be able to get closer to musical practice in a country that crushes him. Drama is at hand, except it’s about the foot. That of the sleeping father, whose plaster has been decorated with the keyboard on which the son exercises. And the plump toes of the patriarch, by the magic of the tracking shot, will occupy the foreground. Drama, you say? The author-director decided otherwise. Panah Panahi takes pleasure in antagonizing the tragedy that unfolds on screen, and we love it. In this road movie at the limit of the closed door, the leak is more like an unbridled Sunday mop.
An addictive spiciness
All means are good to get us out of the drama, and the filmmaker uses them brilliantly, whether it’s the looks at the camera launched by the actors, who shatter, for a few seconds, the illusion of the fourth wall, music, just too melancholy to be honest, or incredible adventures. But, above all, there is humor.
The young Panahi has plenty of this earthy marrade. And original, on top of that. We savor his dialogues as we would savor an addictively spicy fruit. Actors of all ages strike their lines with brilliant detachment while the energy of the youngest acts as a driving force for the others. Between the youngest of the family, who talks like an adult about his romantic conquests and his expensive phone, and the father, a cynical huckster who makes fun of every situation, the Iranian director dares a light, mischievous and rich writing that bounces off the melodrama with great bursts of absurdity like a tap dancer on the floor. The sociopolitical discourse – because there is a lot of sociopolitical discourse – is marbled with irony and sarcasm, above all not to give us the opportunity to feel sorry for the fate of the characters.
The director himself takes good care of it. On the contrary, his staging ridicules his heroes while the characters ridicule each other. Panah Panahi uses its sets, the confined space of the car in particular, to create comedy. He twists reality to make it comical and surprises us at every turn. However, he makes few concessions to film poetry. Better still, with his explosive humour, he creates what we will call the improbable poetics and manages to amaze us in the midst of our bursts of laughter. With On the way !, the son Panahi offers himself a place in the sun next to his father. Unique, joyful, unmissable.