Selected by Tajikistan but ultimately not accepted by the Academy to compete in the Oscar international feature category, “Black Rabbit, White Rabbit” begins ambitiously, with a famous quote from playwright Anton Chekhov about setups and payoffs — about how if a gun is established in a story, it must go off. Moments later, an inviting long take involving a young man selling an antique rifle ends in farcical tragedy, signaling an equally farcical series of events that grow stranger and stranger. The film, by Iranian director Shahram Mokri, folds in on itself in intriguing (albeit protracted) ways, warping its meta-fictional boundaries until they supersede its characters, or any underlying meaning.
Still, it’s a not-altogether-uninteresting exercise in exploring the contours of storytelling, told through numerous thematically interconnected vignettes. The opening Chekhov quote, though it might draw one’s attention to minor details that end up insignificant, ensures a heightened awareness of the movie’s artifice,…
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