Images from Iran: The Other (2010) and The Orion (2010) (by Bamshad)

Bamshad was born in Iran but his family had to flee the country when he was ten to seek political asylum in Sweden. Bamshad is a medical student in his final years, and spends every second of his free time watching movies and writing about them on Film Zoom. For the Iranian Film Blogathon, he has already written a beautiful piece on Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, and here he reviews two new films that he recently saw in Gothenburg: The Other and The Orion. I am so pleased to add this to the list of links. I haven’t seen either film, and now I cannot wait.

The Other, Mehdi Rahmani, 2010

In Mehdi Rahmani’s The Other (2010), a small boy is angered to learn that a friend and colleague of his deceased father has fallen in love with his mother. On top of that he must (as the man in the house) follow this new enemy on a business trip to Tehran in order to sell a van.

The Other is a conventional road movie with an odd couple in the front seats. As the story progresses these two come to see each other in a different light and successfully bond. In this case the point of connection between the boy and the man is the frustration they both carry inside them of not possessing any control over their own lives. To live in a society that requires little boys to act as men and shoulder the weight of entire households while at same time having all the important decisions taken over their heads. This and the memory of the father bring the characters closer and set them against a common adversary, the boy’s older uncle who has chosen another man for his mother to marry.

The director effectively eases the mood by sneaking in some amusing scenes (as when the pair takes on odd transport assignments in Tehran in order to pay for car repairs) but a greater trust in his talented and sensitive cast would have been a benefit to the entire movie. Also unfortunately, Rahmani’s perspective is entirely masculine which reduces the mother to a trophy for the winner to take home.

Nasim Kiani in The Orion, directed by Ali Akbar Zamani Esmati, 2010

That is not a problem in The Orion (2010), Ali Akbar Zamani Esmati’s film about Elham (Nasim Kiani), a university student who has fallen in love with her astronomy professor (Mehrdad Sheykhi). Since sex outside of marriage is forbidden he has arranged for an illegal surgical procedure that restores her virginity. However things do not go as planned.

What is at the heart of Esmati’s movie is the great rift between women and men that the country’s strict Islamic laws have created. By dividing the society according to sex and forbidding social contact very early on these restrictions have not only made men and women strangers towards each other, but also refused them one of the most basic needs of a human being, namely the touch of another. The utterly confusing and frustrating experience of marriage after a lifetime of isolation is embodied by the professor’s longtime friend, a newly married man with a relationship consisting mainly of angry phone calls.

The most compelling aspect of the film is Elham’s journey, made even more palpable by Kiani’s understated but piercing performance. With little use of dialogue she conveys the entire emotional spectrum of the character; the fear and anguish, the humiliation and (when the police gets involved) the need to repeatedly explain herself and her actions to different (male) authority figures. As a woman she is forced to take full responsibility and accept all legal and social consequences. To make matters worse, Esmati (and editing consultant Jafar Panahi) tweak the chronology, making the film double up on itself so that a possible way out for Elham suddenly turns into a dead-end.