On the eve of his third marriage, independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi offers his confession: He's messed up his life with an obsession with prostitutes. Zahedi's serio-comic autobiographical film journeys from his heady days as a philosophy major and devotee of Sarte through his failed attempts to become a "famous filmmaker," while leaving a wake of angry wives and lovers. The deeply self-absorbed Zahedi, who resembles a slip of a boy with an overgrown head, is rather pathetic, but like his obvious antecedent, the 1970s-vintage Woody Allen, he turns his navel-gazing into humor. That Zahedi is a wry and self-effacing narrator keeps his tale from becoming sordid, and its cheerfully low budget quashes any titillating factor. So too does his arsenal of techniques ... direct-camera address, archival footage, still photography, animation and dramatic re-creations ... that suggest Zahedi favors entertaining storytelling over explicit veracity.
Sat., April 22, through Thu., April 27. Melwood (AH)