A sweet ‘Dream’ that lasts too long

“White Dream” is a sweet-natured Iranian film of considerable charm and humor that might have been more enjoyable had its writer-director-star, Hamid Jebelli, been a tad less self-indulgent in telling his slender tale. As a mildly mentally challenged man in his mid-40s, Jebelli’s Reza is a figure of comic pathos, the kind of role it’s easy for an actor to get carried away in, especially when he’s directing himself. To his credit, Jebelli never quite lapses into Roberto Benigni territory, and as a filmmaker he’s subtle and observant.

The childlike Reza regularly speaks at length to his dead mother, lives with his father in a tiny apartment in an old Tehran building and works as a gofer in a fabric shop that specializes in materials for wedding gowns. Reza tends to be an incessant chatterbox and sounds like Liberace speaking Persian in a monotone. This tendency is credible, but since Jebelli is on screen virtually full time, his Reza becomes as tedious to the viewer as to those around him. In short, his father (Yousef Yousef Pashandi) and his employer (Hossein Najafi), decent men both, deserve all our sympathy.

His boss and others have planted the idea in Reza’s mind that it’s high time he married, but any woman who might objectively be considered a suitable match for his unprepossessing self is out of the question to him. His dream girl is a mannequin, dressed in a white wedding gown, in the shop’s window, eventually replaced in his imagination by a customer, Fariba (Elizabeth Amini), who has to be among the most beautiful women in the city if not the entire country. Reza literally swoons over her, which only intensifies his obliviousness to a shy young seamstress, Masoumeh (Soghra Karimi), who discovers she is fonder of Reza than she realized.

“White Dream” is graceful if too leisurely in pace, and its strongest suit may well be the gentleness in its humor. A presentation of the Iranian Film Society, it is likely to appeal primarily to older Persian-speaking audiences.

*

‘White Dream’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Suitable for general audiences

Hamid Jebelli... Reza

Elizabeth Amini... Fariba

Soghra Karimi...Masoumeh

Yousef Yousef Pashandi...Reza’s father

Hossein Najafi...Reza’s boss

An Iranian Film Society and N.E.J. International Pictures presentation. Writer-director Hamid Jebelli. Producer Majid Modaressi. Cinematographer Touraj Aslani. Editor Jila Ipkehi. Music Pirooz Arjmand. Production designer Iraj Tahmasb. In Persian, with English subtitles.

Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6969.