Through the Olive Trees (1994)
The third installment in the “Koker-trilogy” gets pretty meta with being about the filming of certain scenes in Life, and Nothing more which was also a mix of documentary and fiction with a followup to the making of Where Is the Friends House?
In this it seems Kiarostami is exploring more his own role with how his films influences the local community of these small villages. Maybe even with some elements of self-criticism to the process and his use of local regular people in his films. I found that aspect to work reasonably well, but the added “love story” takes over the last of the film and it become a bit obnoxious. I have “love story” in quotes, because it comes off as something resembling stalking with how the man just endlessly keeps talking to the woman of his affection who grant him absolute silence. It is more nuanced than that, with culturally bound restraints and her family’s outspoken disdain for the man - so we never really know what she might feel one way or the other. That also make the “love story” very one-sided and a bit more difficult to find properly interesting.
I think Where Is the Friends House? is a marvelous film that everyone should at least give a chance, but these two followup movies are very meta and experimental with how the director uses it to create some sort of dialogue with himself about his work, which is an interesting concept, but mostly as a curiosity and not great films in themselves as the first one was.
Rating: 3