August 9, 2002 | By turns whimsical and absurdist, Babek Payami's Secret Ballot is an engagingly understated Iranian film with the flavor of a shaggy-dog story conceived by Samuel Beckett and directed by Jim Jarmusch.

Almost every scene in the movie, which charts the events of a single day, appears to be bathed in the melancholy glow of late-afternoon sunlight. But the first image is a foreboding dawn, as a transport plane drops what appears to be a bomb onto the desert island of Kish in the Persian Gulf.

Fortunately, the parachuted object contains nothing more explosive – and nothing less important – than a ballot box and paper ballots. An unnamed solider (Cyrus Abidi), cranky with boredom while he and a comrade guard a deserted beach, is mildly annoyed by this disruption of his routine. His annoyance escalates into outrage when an election official arrives by speedboat, armed with an order for his services as an escort. "This order is no good," the solider complains. "It says an agent will come. Not a woman."

But the agent (Nassim Abdi) is indeed a woman, clad in a traditional black chador but brimming with borderline-revolutionary attitudes. She's doing her best to encourage voting in a land whose people have very little experience with such democratic notions. And the soldier, regardless of whether he likes it, must help her collect signed ballots from every eligible voter on the island before 5 p.m.

Secret Ballot unfolds slowly – many long sequences take place in real time – but the time is spent wisely on revealing details and seriocomic insights. There are hints of surrealism to some haunting images: An outside bed shared in shifts by the guards, a traffic light in the middle of nowhere, a potential voter who must be chased down and practically forced at gunpoint to cast his ballot. For the most part, though, the style is doggedly realistic, almost documentary-like.

During the long day's canvassing, the taciturn solider and the talkative official encounter diverse hues of local color. Early on, they meet a truckdriver who has transported several of his village's married women, fully expecting to fill out their ballots for them. "I know who they should vote for," he complains, profoundly shocked when he's told that they'll have to cast their own votes. (One of the women is declared ineligible because of her youth, prompting a puzzled query: "She may marry at 12, but she cannot vote?")

Later, they meet an old man who insists on voting for God as favorite candidate, a mourner who tells the official that women are forbidden inside cemeteries, and a group of would-be voters who are greatly upset to find their favorite sons are not included on the list of "approved candidates." Some claim to know nothing about the election or the people running for office. But the election official brushes aside those minor quibbles, insisting that "everyone must vote" because… well, because it's good for them. And for their country. At least, that's her story, and she's sticking to it.

Here and there, the movie pointedly suggests that the election may really be as meaningless as the reluctant voters claim. Even so, as the election agent goes about her Sisyphean duties, and gradually develops a grudgingly respectful relationship with the soldier, she achieves something not unlike heroic status. Secret Ballot is ineffably amusing and affecting as it contemplates the indefatigable optimism of a true believer.