Dirs: Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha | Iran, Drama 97’
The current success of a new Iranian film My Favourite Cake in the UK press is remarkable. This achievement comes at the same time that we are viewing news bulletins containing images of increasingly repressive morality laws curtailing the rights of women, videos of Iranian women wearing veils and singing so as to be heard but not seen, as well as news of the house arrest of the filmmakers of this remarkable film that follows their award-winning Ballad of a White Cow.
The film was first screened at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival where it garnered worldwide distribution after winning the FIPRESCI and the Ecumenical Jury prize. The fate of the filmmakers is not yet known with charges against them involving scenes of women without veils and the drinking of wine, which is forbidden. The message behind the universal themes of the film however feels even more potent now.
My Favourite Cake is essentially a two hander between Mahin, played by Lily Farhadpour, and Faramarz, played by Esmail Mehrab, which explores feelings of love and affection that grow between two people who meet and engineer a clandestine night together. This may in other hands seem a straightforward and simple form of romcom but there is a subtle and very real difference as the drama happens within a framework of laws governing the lives of Iranian women.
The film opens on a quiet new day and ends with the dawn of another new day when nothing will be the same for Lily. She is a war widow who lost her husband years ago, has a grown-up family who live abroad and whom we hear on the phone but never see. The film includes a meal for a group of her enlightened women friends who all meet from time to time to discuss life, remember days of youth and poke gentle fun at the conventions of contemporary Iranian life. The film views Lily as a woman possibly constrained by the concerns of a wider family, and the daily pressure of life that includes nosy intolerant women in the apartment block where she lives. Framarz has spent a life time diligently working hard as a taxi driver. He was once married, never had children and is divorced. The two meet on an evening together with the knowledge that Iranian law forbids women to meet men without the presence of male members of family and as well as intimate relationships between men and women outside of marriage.
Directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha are a married couple who have created a sensitive and beautiful film that echoes the mood and tempo that Rainer Werner Fassbinder bought to Fear Eats the Soul in 1972. Links with the earlier German film about a relationship between an older woman and a younger Arab man are remarkable with both films exploring how personal freedoms and sexual desire are challenged and thwarted by the pressure of social and political convention. They also contain gentle naturalistic performances and use initial cross cuts between two people merging into a single frame as both rediscover feelings and a sense of belonging through the power of love. The use of a car as an enclosed private space in which people grow and change is effective, as are references to mirrors and the use of lighting along with scenes involving a television screen which is how Lily escapes into the romantic world of golden age cinema. Fassbinder included a coterie of women around his central character commenting on life and in My Favourite Cake a group of taxi drivers are observed talking about the meaningless nature of war and how better life was before the revolution of 1979. An image of a Viagra package is one of many tiny telling instances of detail that build up the fabric of the film.
Final scenes contain an element of framing involving melodrama which has always been part of the power of cinema to engage an audience and the poignant heart-breaking conclusion of My Favourite Cake reflects this, as well as evoking the film that inspired Fear Eats the Soul. This is All that Heaven Allows, a 1955 American film by Douglas Sirk, about the relationship between a widow and a young man which is all but ruined by problems of class, convention and repression which are ideas present in this latest film. Sirk commented that he intended the title of his film to be a metaphor for what little heaven allows and how stingy this can be. My Favourite Cake takes this provocative concept a stage further by offering two people a mere slice of a beautiful blossom orange cake that may never actually be tasted or eaten.
PETER HERBERT – CURATOR MANAGER – THE ARTS PROJECT
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