By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Maryam Keshavarz
Starring: Nasrin Pakkho | Nikohl Boosheri | Reza Sixo Safai | Sarah Kazemy | Sina Amedson | Soheil Parsa
Country: france, iran, united_states
Year: 2011
Running time: 107
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1684628/
Jason says: “CIRCUMSTANCE is sneaky. It starts out as a simple tale of teenage idealism and perhaps forbidden love, and that thread certainly continues throughout the entire film. The clever thing that writer/director Maryam Keshavarz does is to show a repressive society not just as an exterior threat, but a cage its prisoners have a part in constructing.
“Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) have been best friends their entire life, and as teenagers, they’re becoming lovers as well. Of course, they’ve got to be careful; modern-day Iran is not a place where such relationships are smiled upon, especially with Shireen living with her uncle because her dissident parents died in prison. Still, Atafeh knows all the places where they can dance, smoke, and listen to rock & roll; her wealthy parents (Soheil Parsa & Nasrin Pakkho) tend to look the other way. Still, they’re well-aware that this can go too far; Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) has just returned from rehab. Like many recovering addicts, he has turned to God, and his God is strict.
“Keshavarz develops the two halves of the story in parallel, and it’s interesting to see how they compare. ‘Ati’ and Shireen act with the enthusiastic abandon of youth; they’re often careless and Atafeh, especially, has more confidence than is perhaps warranted. Their idea of freedom and rebellion is mild, occasionally funny in its naïveté. It’s an attitude that perhaps father Firouz and mother Azar are not doing enough to temper; though basically liberal, they’ve been isolated enough to not have to worry. Meanwhile, Mehran is spending more time at the mosque and feeling like he doesn’t fit in among his family. We meet him as he is humbled in both senses of the word, and those two emotions feed on each other. It’s interesting that the main characters don’t really do a lot for the first half of the movie or so, but there’s still something engrossing about it as the bulk of the characters stand still while Mehran moves inexorably toward the lure of fundamentalism. The two threads occasionally tie together, creating moments of tension that increase every time.
“When the climax comes, Keshavarz does a number of interesting things. The threads don’t just tie together, but entwine, making the rest of the movie tightly connected. There’s melodrama to the last act, but it never goes beyond what seems reasonable in a repressive country. We get an up-close look at how dictatorships work both at the macro and micro level, and more interestingly, in how repressive societies form and gain power. The last few scenes are impressive studies in weakness and strength, how good feelings can be twisted into bad situations.
“Reza Sixo Safai winds up being central to this; Mehran’s arc is straightforward, but each step must feels natural. It’s an impressive transformation, especially when the audience sees how the insecurities and weakness from the start are still present at the end. Atafeh doesn’t undergo quite the same sort of metamorphosis, but she grows up nicely over the course of the film; Nikohl Boosheri makes a character that could be annoyingly irresponsible at the start quite sympathetic. Sarah Kazemy has to do something a little different as Shireen – this character has less of a safety net, and it shows – but manages just as well.
“It’s a well-made movie. Shooting in Tehran is obviously out of the question, but Beirut substitutes nicely. Keshavarz sticks to primarily middle-class environs and holds off showing the women there women as victims, giving us a picture of Iran as a country that is inclined to be more modern and free than a determined minority will allow it to be. There may not be anything deliberate to how establishing shots of the mosque where Mehran worships make it look like the world’s most phallic building, but it works to get the idea of male power established even while Atafeh and Shireen are still mostly doing what they will. She also does a neat thing with surveillance video footage, making it part of the plot but also a visual means to equate the oppression of the government with how a home can become a dictatorship.
“It’s been done before, of course, but seldom this well. It’s a remarkably tight combination of coming-of-age story and social
commentary, engrossing when it could just have been dry or hysterical. 5 cats
“Seen 1 May 2011 in Somerville Theatre #3 (IFFBoston 2011)”
Chris says: “What fan of independent world cinema wouldn’t want to see an Iranian film about a teenage lesbian relationship? CIRCUMSTANCE gets a lot of mileage from its novel premise alone. That director Maryam Keshavarz herself conveys a decidedly more youthful viewpoint of Iran than what most western audiences are familiar with (via the likes of Kiarostami, Panahi, etc;) renders the premise damn near irresistible—particularly to those of us who want to see what Iranian youth are really like. When Keshavarz offers a peek into an edgy dance club or four young adults covertly dubbing an American film into Persian, it carries an electrical charge, vindication that a culture is not always how we imagine it and simultaneously is similar to our own.
“Sadly, Keshavarz hasn’t made a film where these and some other often lovely moments cohere. In constructing a romance between two girls, one from an affluent, comparatively liberal family, the other from a more modest, conservative background, she gets the big picture across with ease. Forbidden love, regardless of the participants’ sex or social background is a concept easily grasped. Where she runs into trouble is with all the details and nuances that, when applied right, lend a concept depth and grace. Here, the screenplay is woefully underdeveloped and sloppy to the point where some of the characters’ motivations seem fuzzy or simply glossed over. She ends up squandering such an intriguing premise with what resembles a first or second draft in need of some fine tuning. 2 1/2 cats”
Jason responds: “Interesting that you aren’t terribly impressed with it approaching it as a forbidden love story; I liked it a lot when I saw it at IFFBoston, but I sort of saw the love affair as a means to get to the portrayal of how a totalitarian regime starts and solidifies in microcosm That’s intriguing stuff, I think, watching the rest of the family not only fall in line, but start down the route of believing in it.”
Chris responds: “Oh, I definitely picked up on the parallels between the love story and Iran’s political structure (I think it’s hard not to), but I didn’t think the director did an adequate job in fleshing them out beyond the surface. I really wanted to like this film and I loved a few scenes, but overall, to me it felt like she had a bunch of good ideas but could not execute them into a solid thesis.”