Ten

All great artists revert to simplicity. Iranian writer/director Abbas Kiarostami has taken film away from cinema and put it somewhere else, in the theatre of Samuel Beckett, perhaps, except Ten inhabits a real world, not one in which characters live in dustbins.

Movies have been made in a single room (Rear Window, 12 Angry Men, Tape), but never in the front seat of a car. Using two video cameras, Kiarostami records 10 journeys through Tehran. Either the driver, or the passenger, is being filmed at one time. The cameras don't move and all you see of the city is glimpsed through an open window.

Conversation is everything. In fact, there's nothing else. The driver's son bangs on at her for divorcing his father and marrying someone else. "I can't live with you. You're a selfish woman," he shouts. He's no more than 11-years-old. She remains calm, never rising to his insults.

The other conversations are with women and they cover taboo subjects, such as sex, religion and shopping. Romance is rubbished as an illusion. Food is better.

The actors are non professionals. Roya Arabshahi, as the driver, is beautiful and Amin Maher, as the boy, terrific. Kiarostami achieves absolute realism within the non-artificial zone of the vehicle.

As an exercise in minimalism, Ten cannot be faulted. As an evening at the cinema, it is a washout.

What's more boring than Kiarostami's 1994 masteryawn, Through The Olive Trees? The answer is here.