This brave Iranian film, the debut of director Maryam Keshavarz, won the Audience Award at Sundance but is never likely to be shown in Tehran. Though specifically an exposure of Iranian youth culture, its main theme is gay life within the terrible constraints of a repressive society.
Its principal characters are two young women who love each other and who attempt to keep together when one of them marries the religious brother of the other. The family is delighted with the wedding but the female lovers find the situation increasingly impossible.
Keshavarz’s film is both sensuous and audacious if a little uneven. It pushes at the barriers with great conviction, being loosely based on the director’s personal experience. Dividing her time between the US and her family home in Shiraz, she clearly knows what she is talking about.
The result is acted out by Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy as the two women, and Reza Sixo Safai as the brother, with what one can only call dramatic restraint, and the underground parties are contrasted with staid family life with real skill.
Cert 15, 107 mins
