The Hidden Half Reviews

A feminist statement told in melodramatic fashion, The Hidden Half is best known for of the controversy surrounding it. Its director, Tahmineh Milani, was arrested after it was made, and, in a case of life imitating art, charged with a crime that could have carried the death penalty. Owing to an international outcry, and to Milani's popularity within Iran, she was released from prison, but the charges remain open. What aroused the ire of the conservative judges who ordered her arrest was the film's depiction of Iran's early '80s cultural revolution, a time of mass unrest among college students that resulted in the closure of Iran's universities for four years. The Hidden Half was the first movie to show these events in any detail. The film itself is something of a mixed bag. Its scenes of the cultural revolution era are fascinating, particularly in the way they show the prominent role of young women in the political underground, and the shocking punishments some of them suffered. But it falters in its melodramatic tone, which, at times, risks pitching the film into soap operatic self-parody. Niki Karimi plays her role with a heavy-handed seriousness that can be quite grating, and detracts at times from the film's most important, and relevant, statements about women, politics, and social relationships. But even with its flaws, The Hidden Half is one of the most forthrightly feminist mainstream films to have come out of almost any country -- including the United States -- in recent years.