Baran Kosari and Yousef Khodaparast in Dancing in the Dust (Film Movement)

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s debut feature, made in 2003, is being seen for the first time in the United States via streaming services. While it is solidly made, its dramatic flaws reveal a novice director feeling his way toward tackling complex moral tales of broken relationships, which he would later perfect in the films that made his international reputation, notably his Oscar-winning A Separation (2011) and The Salesman (2016).

Nazar, an impulsive young man, falls madly in love with Reyhane after seeing her on a bus. They get married not long after, but soon, he is under fire from his family—both his father and mother very much disapprove—and his friends, who say he should break up with her because of a rumor (unfounded) that her mother was once a prostitute.

Nazar listens to those around him and decides to divorce Reyhane. Yet he still loves her and wants to pay back her dowry with money he borrows at an exorbitant interest rate. This puts him in desperate financial straits, despite working extra shifts at a weird pharmaceutical facility that uses snake venom to create vaccines. Nazar then gets the idea that catching snakes might make him some quick and needed money, so he hides in a van that delivers the reptiles and hitches a ride. The driver (known only as the Old Man) doesn’t appreciate Nazar’s bombast but tolerates him. After they arrive in the desert—where else would someone catch these venomous reptiles?—Nazar gets bitten by a poisonous snake, and the Old Man drives him back into the city to try and save him from the potentially fatal wound.

Farhadi has stated his admiration for the films of the barely known (in the West) Iranian masters Bahram Beyzai (Ballad of Tara) and Dariush Mehrjui (The Cow) for their ability to dramatize Iranian society as it is instead of, as Farhadi has put it, explain Iran to the world. Although he would thread that thematic needle in his powerful later films, in Dancing in the Dust, Farhadi isn’t as successful in dramatizing the tension between the traditional, religious Iranian state and secular, modern society. Pitting the brash, foolish, and loquacious Nazar against the silent and wise Old Man is more contrived than truthful.

As the Old Man, Faramarz Gharibian acts mainly with his weathered, expressive face, while Baran Kosari is wonderfully alive and natural as Reyhane. As Nazar, Yousef Khodaparast—an amateur performer that Farhadi probably chose for his ability to act as a bigmouthed chatterbox—is good at bluster, but at a loss when the script calls for more delicacy.

However, Dancing in the Dust contains moments that tantalizingly foreshadow the world-class filmmaker Farhadi would become. They include a scene of Nazar talking to his mother-in-law while she’s hanging clothes outside. Strategically hidden behind pieces of clothing or with her back to the camera, her face is never seen, making her subtly mysterious to Nazar and the viewer. But overall, the film works best as a blueprint for the rigorous and mature films that its director would later make.