The Sheila Variations

Hemlock; directed by Behrouz Afkhami

In my continuing tour of contemporary Iranian cinema, I watched Hemlock last night. Directed by Behrouz Afkhami, and starring the wonderful Hedye Tehrani, it tells the story of a mid-level manager (played by Fariborz Arabnia) at a factory in Tehran - who is being bribed to sell the company to a bunch of exiled Iranians from Los Angeles - he will be made CEO if he accepts the bribe, and there's a shadiness to the entire thing. His partner gets in a horrible car accident (there is some speculation that it was NOT an accident) and is hospitalized. Now all of this is basically just prologue and context for the real guts of the story: Mahmoud (Arabnia) has a wife and kids, and lives in comfort in a middle-class suburb of Tehran. He begins to drive into Tehran every day to visit his injured partner in the hospital. While there, he meets and becomes captivated by a nurse in the hospital - played by Hedye Tehrani. Although Tehrani is a giant star in Iran, I only first became aware of her last year when I saw the lovely film Fireworks Wednesday (my review here). I sing the praises of Tehrani in that review, and I'll continue it here.

Hemlock is a melodrama, with serious issues being brought up - but in a kind of ham-fisted soap opera-ish style. If I had to come up with a word, I'd say it was "overwrought". It's basically the story of a man who has an extramarital affair - only in Iran they have a special name for it: "temporary marriage" (or sigheh). It's extremely controversial - and people on both sides of the argument feel very strongly about it. It's one of those weird issues where Iranian feminists line up with the conservative mullahs on the same side. Some feel that "temporary marriage" is akin to prostitution ... others feel that sex is a normal impulse, and people need SOME release, even if they are not married yet - due to whatever reason. "Temporary marriage" is a way to keep all sex within the bounds of legality. Elaine Sciolino wrote an article about temporary marriage which presents the issue pretty clearly. The pros, the cons ... and not just intellectual pros and cons, because, after all, this is not just an intellectual debate. It's an issue that actually affects real people's lives, for realz. I like Sciolino a lot - she wrote the wonderful bookPersian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (excerpt here) - she can be a bit soft on the regime, I'm not wacky about that - but her book is not primarily a political book (and neither are her columns - although you realize that any issue involving people's personal lives becomes political in Iran - down to the clothes people wear, and issues involving sex, birth control, masturbation ... Whatever. It's political.) I think Sciolino's gift resides (and I highly recommend her books) in presenting the people, in their context ... and yes, drawing conclusions ... but also being able to admit, "You know what? There are things going on here that I can't quite understand.") Temporary marriage is the real topic of Hemlock, but that kind of gets lost in the top-heavy plot, and some scenes which push beyond drama and go into something I would call over-the-top. But don't let that put you off. It's an interesting little film, a domestic drama, really - which confronts the issue of temporary marriage head-on, and how silly it is. It's an affair, plain and simple. His wife back home has no idea that he has a whole other life in Tehran.

Hedye Tehrani plays a modern woman, very unlike the more traditional wife, who is draped in the full black chador. Tehrani wears light flowered scarves around her head, Ray Banz, and long light-colored trench coats. She is independent (although we come to realize that she has a lot more complexity than is first revealed - her father is an opium addict, and she buys him opium on the black market ... she's basically his supplier. So there are these scenes of her careening around in a car with her drug dealer, a nice guy actually - she's smoking, and putting the drugs into her handbag ... It's a whole side of her that her "temporary husband", blown away by her beauty, never sees. Until the end, when it is too late). Mahmoud, who also seems like a modern man, reveals himself as traditional - when he suggests to her that they get a "temporary marriage" - basically licensing their sexual encounter - and she laughs in his face. "You believe in all that stuff?" she says.

A couple words about Tehrani. She is an actress. Many Iranian films use non-actors, and that has its uses - but when you see a script in the hands of an actress, who knows how to create a character, and make a scene happen - and have a subtext ... you can see the difference. Tehrani, like I mentioned in my review of Fireworks Wednesday, seems uninterested in being liked. And that's so rare in actors - especially gorgeous ones, and she's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. So far, she has revealed herself, as an actress, as willing to go where the character goes, do what the character does, and not protect herself. She is not particularly sympathetic in Hemlock, although eventually your heart does ache for her. She's a liar. She has not told Mahmoud the truth about who she is, and what her life is like. She makes up a story about being abandoned by her first husband, you know - to "up" the sympathy factor. She sneaks around, meeting her buddy who is a drug dealer. And as the film goes on, the "temporary marriage" she is in begins to grate. And then, not just grate - but drive her out of her mind. She wants to be validated, she wants to be accepted into his life. His wife doesn't even know. Tehrani shows up at their house one day, when he is not there, and sits chatting with the wife, making up a story about how Mahmoud was going to help her get a visa. Mahmoud begins to realize that, by letting her into his life, he has perhaps sown the seeds of his own destruction. He tries to cut it off. She threatens suicide. He pays her a settlement (which is part of the whole "temporary marriage" deal) and she stands in her kitchen, alone, looking at the coins on the counter, weeping. Tehrani is wonderful. The material is not worthy of her - it's all pretty conventional, the way it is filmed ... but I just love watching her act. She's unpredictable. She appears to be alive, rather than acting.

In one scene, she and Mahmoud sit and have a picnic in a park. She teases him about being a good Muslim. He says that yes, he does pray 5 times a day. She seems surprised. The thing about temporary marriage is that - as it is presented - it is little better than a sneaky affair. And she eventually, with the coins on the counter, realizes she is in the role of a whore. But she loves him. In the picnic scene, she asks him if he could teach her how to do the daily prayers. You get the sense that she is not interested in it for religious reasons, but as a way to being close to him. Tehrani is never playing just one thing. There's always a deep coursing river going on beneath her external actions ... she's fascinating to watch.

They have a date that night. She is going to cook him dinner at her house. We see her shopping beforehand, buying produce, and fish ... and then she goes to an upscale clothing store. The first floor has "modern" clothes - you can see that there are colors in the clothes on the racks. But she goes downstairs ... to where the traditional chadors are sold.

To me, this was the most subversive scene in the film (which, like I mentioned, is pretty conventional - and even with the "temporary marriage" thing is basically a Lifetime Movie - Iranian style - about infidelity). Tehrani tries on a black chador, staring at herself in the mirror. We watch the transformation occur - her shape obliterated - but because of the context in which she tries it on it becomes almost unbelievably provocative. She's not trying on the chador because she wants to become more devout, and show her devout feelings. Tehrani plays the scene so that we know she's doing it as a joke. A sexy joke. Mahmoud will arrive at her place, and see a black-clad woman waiting for him, and he will laugh, because it is so unlike her. It's not an expression of religious feeling - it's a costume. It's akin to buying a little sexy Frederick's of Hollywood number and answering the door in that get-up when your lover arrives. THAT is what Tehrani is playing in the scene.

Tehrani slowly drapes the folds over her face, her eyes mesmerized by her own reflection ... At one point, she starts to laugh to herself, laugh at what she looks like, and then, with mischievous glimmering eyes, she pulls the black veil up over the bottom half of her face, so only her eyes are visible. The typical image we have of Islamic women. But look at what is going on in her eyes. She is laughing. She is eager to show off her costume to Mahmoud, because he will think it funny, too.

A pretty ballsy scene, I'm thinking.

The film is drenched in pathos and tears, but once I succumbed to the fact that it was a Lifetime movie - I enjoyed it.

But mostly I enjoyed watching Tehrani at work. She's something else.

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