The Day I Became A Woman Reviews

Three loosely connected half-hour films add up to one powerful indictment of the onerous daily restrictions women face in contemporary Iran. In the first segment, Hava (Fatemeh Cheragh Akhtar) celebrates her ninth birthday. As her mother and grandmother prepare her first chador — the long head covering Islamic women must wear after a certain age — Hava begs for permission to join her friend Hassan (Hassan Nebhan) for ice cream. But life isn't so simple anymore: Since Hava is now considered a woman, she must obey the rules that will govern her dress and behavior for the rest of her life, and that behavior no longer includes playing with boys. In the second episode, a young wife presses the boundaries of her freedom by entering a women's bicycle race. As Ahoo (Shabnam Toloui) pedals along an endless track by the seashore, her husband (Cyrus Kahouri Nejad) pursues her on horseback and threatens to divorce her if she doesn't drop out. In a startling show of assertiveness, Ahoo refuses. In the final and most surreal vignette, the elderly, wheelchair-bound Hoora (Azizeh Seddighi) commandeers a group of boys to follow her around the city as she spends her savings on all the consumer goods she always wanted: A washing machine, a refrigerator, living room furniture, a samovar. As Hoora works her way down her wish list, she unties the "reminding strings" she has wrapped around her fingers until there's only one puzzling bit of cloth left. In a tableau worthy of Rene Magritte, the boys arrange her purchases on the sandy beach; bereft of love, children and companionship (she's neither mother, daughter or wife), Hoora can't figure out what's missing. Written by maverick Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (GABBEH, THE SILENCE) and directed with startling refinement by his young wife, Marzieh Meshkini, this is one of a handful of films to come out of the now-defunct Makhmalbaf Film House, a school founded by Makhmalbaf to teach his family and friends the art of filmmaking. Throughout its four-year existence, the school never gained government approval, and if this deceptively straightforward film is any indication, it's plain why. It's a bold, vibrant piece of filmmaking that dares to not only question the justice of sexist orthodoxy, but to demonstrate the poignancy of lives trapped and twisted within its confines. (In Farsi, with English subtitles.)