The labyrinth of betrayal

The cinematic film “Highlight” written and directed by “Asghar Naeemi” is the story of the film’s characters facing the crisis of betrayal. The idea for the film is attractive, creative and modern but it is destroyed with the issues in the script and armature acting of the main characters. Naeemi is a director who has made acceptable works such as “Parallel Shadows” (2015) and “Hello to Love” (2009). The film “Highlight” is affected by social concerns of the director. The start of the film is created by the best incident and the audience thinks that they are going to see a suspenseful film. A man and a woman called “Leili” and “Saeed” are told that their spouses are hospitalized due to an accident. The unconsciousness of their spouses creates an air of curiosity and suspense. If this had continued and the audiences were able to slowly see the new angels of the secret relationship between the spouses of these two (Leili and Saeed), “Highlight” would have been an attractive and suspenseful film. But the reality is that, due to not having visuals, the audience does not have a specific image of the betrayal. Because of this, we cannot sympathize completely with the characters of Saeed and Leili, so that it can be a backdrop for the time when it shows their unsound decision in a mutual betrayal. In other words, when the film’s characters who are suffering and have been hurt by an incident make an important and unsound decision and do something effective, if there have not been visual and conceptual arrangement for this act, then the audience is not able to get involve in the story and the necessary sympathy will not form. This issue would have been resolved if there had been scenes of the spouses’ betrayal but that did not happen. Moreover, the primitive and amateurish acting of “Pejman Bazeghi” and “Azadeh Zaree” in roles of Saeed and Leili has done great damage to the film, if the director had paid attention when choosing the actors, then maybe the issues in characterization would not have been so apparent. The most important way an actor creates sympathy between the character and the audiences is with their expressions when they are in close up. But in “Highlight” during dialogues and different experiences such as sadness, curiosity, surprise and others, it does not really change the expressions of these two actors and this is an important issue. Overall with attention to the amazing idea of “Highlight”, maybe if the director did another edit then maybe this film would have a better structure.