A leading Iranian filmmaker in the '70s, Bahman Farmanara had his career cut short by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when government censors banned his politically unfashionable work and he went into exile in Canada, where he worked in film distribution. After returning to Iran in 1989, Farmanara resolved to break back into directing, only to have his scripts rejected time and again by the authorities. In Smell Of Camphor, Fragrance Of Jasmine, his first feature in more than 20 years, Farmanara's pent-up frustration has curdled into wry cynicism and comic resignation, a bitter laugh near the end of an aborted run. Following the tradition of reflexive Iranian films such as Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's A Moment Of Innocence, Smell Of Camphor is an autobiographical movie-movie with the director himself in the lead role. But while Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf used self-reference as a springboard into larger points about the filmmaking process and other philosophical issues, Farmanara turns his gaze so far inward that he crosses into shallow solipsism. The "camphor" of the title refers to a malodorous aroma his onscreen character associates with death, having first scented it in his wife's face cream the night before she died, and having later discovered that corpses are bathed in it. Everywhere he goes, the stench of death follows, so much so that he's glumly accepted its inevitability. Plagued by a nagging heart condition, Farmanara defies his doctor's orders by continuing to smoke heavily and ignoring any dietary suggestions. When he visits his wife's grave, convinced that he'll be joining her soon, he's appalled to find that the adjacent plot they had reserved for his body has already been occupied. Even the film he's been commissioned to make for Japanese financiers, a documentary about Iranian funeral rites, haunts his thoughts and dreams with images of his withering mortality. Weary and self-pitying, Farmanara doesn't make for an especially compelling tour guide through the film's alternately comic and sentimental episodes. For every inspired moment, such as the grave-plot snafu or a harrowing scene involving a female hitchhiker cradling her dead newborn, there are long stretches devoted to little more than the director's whiny narcissism. In spite of a few other major missteps, most notably an inexplicable dream sequence in which Farmanara is beaten by Japanese dwarves, Smell Of Camphor pays off in a brilliantly funny climax that collides its twin motifs of death and filmmaking. But, after a 20-year hiatus, it's a shame that Farmanara couldn't think of much more to do than complain about his absence.