ACCLAIMED BY a group of Farsi-language film critics in 1997 as the greatest Iranian film ever made, Dariush Mehrjui's 1990 Hamoun is a scathingly funny dissection of the Tehrani intellectual class. Hamoun, a wandering intellectual, is tormented by his wife's desire to divorce him, and turns over the circumstances of their courtship and marriage in his mind. Less dedicated to a particular style than to a depiction of the reality of his characters, interior and exterior, Mehrjui playfully assembles a widely varied technique here, from the Fellini-esque dream sequences that bookend the film to the repeated shots of Hamoun alone in his car, pondering life's mysterious turns in a manner highly reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami.

Hamoun is ultimately unmasked as a man whose lack of faith has seeped through every aspect of his life, poisoning his relationship with his wife and destroying his professional ambitions. Mehrjui, though, like Kiarostami, ushers his films through the darkness in order to make the light that much sweeter. Hamoun is last seen breathing two short, raspy breaths after narrowly averting disaster. Mehrjui alerts us that drawing breath, too, is a pleasure, and one not to be lightly taken.