Chaharshanbeh Soori is a beautiful movie, directed with so much subtlety and refinement, bringing the best of the actors out of them. The superb narratives and very good filming are topped with great story telling, making it a must-see and a fresh blood in the Iranian cinema.

The complication of human behavior and psyche as well as the flow of the events, thoughts, and emotions, remind one of Milan Kundera's novels.

The character development is really flawless, and I have never seen Hedyeh Tehrani in a better and more touching scene than the one where she is in the bathroom with her sister in Fireworks Wednesday.

Great job and congratulations to Asghar Farhadi and Mani Haghighi.

A wide-eyed bride-to-be gets a temp job as a housemaid, and finds herself in the middle of an explosive situation, and not just from the fireworks celebration of the New Year. Yet another fantastic movie from Iran, brimming with intense yet somehow understated family drama... something like Cassavetes, perhaps. The performances are all really good, especially Hedye Tehrani as the jealous wife (to continue the Cassavetes comparison, she's got kind of a Gena Rowlands thing going on). Although the commentary on gender roles will have more meaning to an Iranian audience, there is a universality to the situation and the interactions. These could easily be American characters, in an American city. Using the noise of the fireworks to punctuate the drama, however, is a little too obvious.

Fireworks Wednesday is celebrated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's 2006 film that finally saw the light of day here in the US ten years later following a DVD release. Here Farhadi is both director and co-screenwriter, exploring marital discord between a middle-class couple on a Wednesday eve right before the Iranian New Year (outside a plethora of fireworks are exploding all over the city).

The warring couple is wife Mozhdeh and husband Morteza Samiei; they have a young son, Amir-Ali who can't help be affected by the terrible tension between his parents. Morteza wants the apartment cleaned as the family was initially planning to take a trip to Dubai the next day (which never comes to fruition). He hires a maid, Rouhi, to clean the apartment, against Mozhdeh's wishes.

Rouhi, is a virtual innocent compared to the Samieis, as she is soon to be married and has a cheerful disposition. Her working-class origins are succinctly contrasted with those of the middle-class Samieis (perhaps Farhadi is emulating Bergman's Persona, the 1966 face-off between a mentally ill actress and her more well-adjusted nurse, charged with taking care of her).

Fireworks Wednesday has a rather slow-moving plot but the central question keeps us interested: is Morteza cheating on Mozhdeh with their divorced neighbor, Simin, who runs an illegal beauty salon in their apartment building?

Mozhdeh conscripts Rouhi to spy on Simin and learns from her that both her husband and the neighbor won't be home until 5PM. Her suspicions about the affair virtually confirmed, Mozhdeh then has Rouhi pick up Amir-Ali at school and goes off to spy on her husband; after he finds out, he publicly beats her and she's ready to take her son and move in with her sister and brother-in-law.

All hell breaks out in the apartment with Mozhdeh accusing her husband of the affair. It's the level-headed Rouhi who lied about how Simin knew of the Samieis' departure time to Dubai (she presents an alternative explanation),calming Mozhdeh and preventing her from leaving.

There are more surprises here but keep in mind, as previously mentioned, it takes quite a bit of time to get to the big payoff. SUPER SPOILERS AHEAD. Yes it's Farhadi who teases us into believing that the wife is unstable and paranoid. But ultimately he reveals to the audience that indeed Morteza has been having an affair with Simin. The next twist is Simin wants out of the affair. And finally Rouhi figures out that Morteza is guilty as sin (she can smell his perfume-the same given to her by Simin during her beauty salon session there earlier). Again, it's the level-headed Rouhi who prevents further heartache by not confirming Mozhdeh's deeply held belief about her husband (which now happens to be true).

Farhadi follows in the path of the earlier master Bergman, suggesting that the unhappy couple will continue to soldier on, despite the husband's infidelity. The performances here by stars Hedyeh Tehrani (Mozhdeh),Taraneh Alidousti (Rouhi),and Hamid Farokhnezhad (Morteza),are impeccable. While the dissection of marital infidelity is not the most original idea for a film, it's presented with great verisimilitude with enough surprises to keep our interest.