An elliptical memoir of a female Iranian's upbringing set during the 1970s, 80s & 90s. Her outspokenness during the Islamic Revolution leads her into exile in Austria and a culture she neither fully understands nor respects.
The style varies from literal realism to emotional expressionism and is, by turns, funny and grimly serious. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards come across as combined Thought and Sex Police who ensure that women's veils are worn in the correct way so as not to inflame the sexuality of passing males. This is all oddly reminiscent of the stories one heard of Christian Victorians draping piano legs for fear of exciting male ardor. Here Muslim fundamentalism and the Christian kind are compared unfavorably as being the same, in that both are obsessed with the suppression of human sexual expression, the enjoyment of which is essentially considered a vice.
The basic problem with this movie is that it never rises above being anything more than a shapeless anecdote; leading to its thematic weakness. The political analysis is feeble – especially about exactly that which the film constantly visualizes: The position of women in an Islamic republic. It is as if the child in the story never really grew up to properly understand her own predicament. The feeble characterization does not help at all here either.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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