A film of unravelled mysteries and repressed longings, in Cheshmeh the nonlinear narrative, moving freely in time, is set in a Muslim community but is centered around a Christian woman who is the love interest of two men and married to a third. The interwoven fates are destined to end in tragedy, but the film leaves what potentially comprises a tragedy off-frame. Despite its richness in Armenian details (which was the cultural heritage of its director Arby Ovanessian), the film shares a significant number of threads with the Iranian New Wave films, particularly in its sense of isolation and fear of strangers, but also sets the hypnotic, numbing pace that the works of some of Ovanessian's contemporaries were going to be known for.
