Reviewed in brief: 'Francofonia' is an ambitious ode to art; 'Fireworks Wednesday' is an Iranian master's ode to relationships

Alexander Sokurov's "Francofonia" occupies a sparsely populated middle ground between documentary and narrative feature; it's the story of a real place, and two real men, told in a circular, meandering fashion with lashings of cinematic imagination.

That place is the Louvre, Paris' glorious palace of art; the men are Jacques Jaujard, deputy head of the Louvre during World War II, and Count Franziskus Wolff-Metternich, the Nazi-appointed overseer who arrived at the Louvre in 1940 to find it empty: Jaujard, with his staff, had acted swiftly to whisk the museum's contents into hiding.

You can find a more straightforward telling of this story in the 2009 documentary "The Rape of Europa." But Sokurov ("Russian Ark") has something more ambitious in mind — by blending archival footage, actor re-creation and special effects, he crafts a cinematic ode to art.

A question is asked, early on: "Who would we be without museums?" It's an answer too terrible to contemplate; luckily — and thanks in part to Jaujard — we don't have to.
Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

One of the most insightful, keen observers of romantic relationships in his native Iran, writer/director Asghar Farhadi has earned an international following with a pair of exquisite dramas about marriages gone wrong, "The Past" (2013) and "A Separation," which won the 2012 Oscar for best foreign film.

Thanks to his Oscar, there's a market for all things Farhadi in America, including his earlier work. That includes 2006's "Fireworks Wednesday," a loopy, off-the-wall tragicomedy that chronicles a particularly stressful day in the life of a miserably unhappy couple whose marriage is on its last legs.

A comedy of bad manners that puts an Iranian spin on Pedro Almodovar's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "Fireworks Wednesday" covers the same thematic terrain as the later films, without their polished perfection. Its absurdist comic tone, which we haven't seen before from this director, is fascinating and immensely enjoyable.
Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer