Dir/scr: Massoud Bakhshi. Iran, France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg. 2019. 89 mins
Women are much maligned in Iran’s sternly patriarchal society. Writer and director Massoud Bakhshi uses one woman’s story to shed light on this deeply misogynist culture that has taken the nation further and further back in time from the more enlightened days of the Shah back in the 1970s. Cutting his teeth in 2014 with A Respectable Family, this second feature is a tensely slick affair that uses melodrama to heighten the film’s stark thematic concerns of life and death.
In Tehran festivities for the winter celebration of Yalda are in full swing lighting up a capital that looks, to all intents and purposes, like any other modern metropolis. The focus narrows into the confined space of a TV studio where Maryam (Sadaf Asgari) arrives in handcuffs to appear in a popular reality show called ’Joy Of Forgiveness’ that also includes literary readings and music.
Maryam has been sentenced to death for the murder of her much older husband Nasser. But the good news is that the family have it in their power to forgive her and make way for a reprieve. Nasser’s daughter Mona (Behnaz Jafari) used to be her best friend. But tonight Mona will decide Maryam’s fate on live television. The film plays out almost like a TV trial, Maryam pleading her case and hoping to persuade Mona to let her go free. Bakhshi mines the rich dramatic potential of the subject to great affect, leaving us shaken and stirred as the story moves towards its febrile finale.
Performances are strong from a really impressive female cast. Asgari makes for a convincingly uneasy Maryam contrasting with the steely calm of Behnaz Jafari’s Mona. We are reminded that men clearly have the upper hand in Iran, but that women can also be each other’s enemies all over the world. MT
Sundance Film Festival 2020 | 23 JANUARY – 1 FEBRUARY 2020