For much of Secret Ballot, the two main characters drive around the barren desert island where the film is set, arguing. Their constant back-and-forth, with the young soldier's incessant whining countered by the election official's mounting exasperation, taps into a strain of comedic bickering that can be found in many modern Iranian films, but it is also reminiscent of the witty repartee of American romantic comedies of the '30s and '40s. While no romance develops between them, by the end the soldier reveals, in an utterly disarming gesture, that she has won his respect. Babak Payami, the film's director, was born in Iran but has spent most of his life abroad. Unlike Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and other Iranian directors who have gained international renown by depicting real people enmeshed in the very real world of Iranian politics and culture, he has no reservations about taking liberties with facts in order to create comedy. Babak has admitted that the Iranian electoral process is nothing like what he depicts in the film, and that the desert island where it is set actually houses a luxury vacation resort. But authenticity is hardly the issue with this film. He isn't trying to make a political point. The unreal locations and eccentric characters that populate the film's beautiful desert and seaside landscapes are there to advance a plot that has no other purpose than to create a series of comedic encounters that are thoroughly satisfying in themselves.