One can already see the signs of self-imitation: the preoccupation
with rural, "primitive" Iran (infuriating Iranian academics who want
to see the primarily urban population of the country represented--they want their Woody Allen movies!); the cloying use
of upturned child faces; the cloying use of old-lady faces as
wrinkled as a donkey's ear; the simple folkloric picture-tells-a-thousand-words image that seems to come out of a
Sunday-school primer's cartoons. Yadda yadda yadda, or so it
seems at this point, as Mrs. Mohsan Makhmalbaf, Marzieh
Meshkini, makes her first film. (Let it be said that this is not unlike
the prominent debut of...A Kate Capshaw Picture.) Makhmalbaf
wrote the script, Mrs. MM ploddingly directed. The picture is a lightly
feminist take on three women "becoming a woman today": the first,
a little girl, is forced to wear the deathly, tomblike,
all-encompassing chador on her ninth birthday. The second, an
adult woman, is pursued by her husband and a mullah on
horseback because she has committed the unpardonable sin
of...cycling. The last and un-flattest episode concerns an old
woman, seemingly poor as a churchmouse, who comes into a
pile of money and wants to buy everything her heart desires.
Rather than veering into the Requiem for a Dreamish, this story
flirts with magical realism--yet stays anchored in literal reality. The
last shot, yoking together the girl from Story #1 and the granny from
Story #2, has a slingshot-like power that might've made the whole
ordeal worthwhile...if it were a short.
THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN has the flat, building-block structure
of a learning director's short movie. Only it's almost eighty minutes
long. The Iranian cinema is in dire risk of veering into mannerism
at this point. Kiarostami's last movie, THE WIND WILL CARRY US,
seemed boringly, self-consciously Kiarostamiesque; and this
picture evokes other, better films and filmmakers. Someone
needs to point in a new direction; self-parody is inching up the
horizon.
with rural, "primitive" Iran (infuriating Iranian academics who want
to see the primarily urban population of the country represented--they want their Woody Allen movies!); the cloying use
of upturned child faces; the cloying use of old-lady faces as
wrinkled as a donkey's ear; the simple folkloric picture-tells-a-thousand-words image that seems to come out of a
Sunday-school primer's cartoons. Yadda yadda yadda, or so it
seems at this point, as Mrs. Mohsan Makhmalbaf, Marzieh
Meshkini, makes her first film. (Let it be said that this is not unlike
the prominent debut of...A Kate Capshaw Picture.) Makhmalbaf
wrote the script, Mrs. MM ploddingly directed. The picture is a lightly
feminist take on three women "becoming a woman today": the first,
a little girl, is forced to wear the deathly, tomblike,
all-encompassing chador on her ninth birthday. The second, an
adult woman, is pursued by her husband and a mullah on
horseback because she has committed the unpardonable sin
of...cycling. The last and un-flattest episode concerns an old
woman, seemingly poor as a churchmouse, who comes into a
pile of money and wants to buy everything her heart desires.
Rather than veering into the Requiem for a Dreamish, this story
flirts with magical realism--yet stays anchored in literal reality. The
last shot, yoking together the girl from Story #1 and the granny from
Story #2, has a slingshot-like power that might've made the whole
ordeal worthwhile...if it were a short.
THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN has the flat, building-block structure
of a learning director's short movie. Only it's almost eighty minutes
long. The Iranian cinema is in dire risk of veering into mannerism
at this point. Kiarostami's last movie, THE WIND WILL CARRY US,
seemed boringly, self-consciously Kiarostamiesque; and this
picture evokes other, better films and filmmakers. Someone
needs to point in a new direction; self-parody is inching up the
horizon.