Hassan Yektapanah's Djomeh concerns a young Afghan worker on an Iranian dairy farm who tries repeatedly, with little success, to woo a grocery-store clerk. As stories go, it doesn't get any simpler, yet in its subtly devastating treatment of a romantic hero at odds with societal codes, the film could be an Edith Wharton novel, with unexpected multitudes that spring outside the frame and between the lines. A former assistant director to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, Yektapanah borrows Djomeh's basic premise from Through The Olive Trees and the pivotal roadway conversations from Taste Of Cherry, but his apprenticeship doesn't end at mere imitation. Like that of his mentor, Yektapanah's open-ended naturalism shows an uncommon faith in the audience to interpret the events for themselves, yet Djomeh is more emotionally direct than Kiarostami's recent work, without his digressions into philosophy and self-reflexivity. With a small but unerringly precise sense of proportion, Yektapanah follows the romantic misadventures of Jalil Nazari, an illegal Afghan emigrant who earns a meager living on a dairy farm, but pines for a more fulfilling life in Iran. On their daily drives to the local village, Nazari speaks frankly to boss Mahmoud Behraznia about the cultural differences between their respective countries and how they affect his all-consuming desire to find a wife. Despite the hardheaded discouragement of his Afghan coworker and guardian (Rashid Akbari), Nazari invents reasons to bike out to the grocery store and court a young woman (Mahbobeh Khalili) behind the counter. But since Iranian customs don't allow open courtship, especially involving a foreigner, he asks Behraznia to deliver a marriage proposal to her father. Slowly and patiently, Djomeh threads his simple quest into an everyday routine that never shows signs of wavering, repeating the same labors with such grueling regularity that Nazari's restlessness is made palpable. For all his starry-eyed naiveté about social mores, his desire to stave off loneliness and establish his place in the world is modest and universal, yet the tacit prejudices of the people around him subtly conspire to break his heart. The one-way exchanges between he and Khalili are like witnessing a raw and agonizing confessional, but more impressive still are the shifting allegiances of his two male confidants and the quiet forces that serve to underline his foreignness. Refusing to press for effect, Yektapanah buries sharp commentary in delicate suggestion, closing with a brilliant final scene that adds more to a surfeit of riches.