THE CIRCLE (Dayereh) --------------------
As credits roll over a black screen, we hear the sounds of childbirth. A white room appears where a white window is slid open on a white door by a white garbed nurse. A black clad grandmother inquires about her daughter's baby. 'It's a girl,' she's told. Hoping for better news, the grandmother tells another member of the hospital staff she hasn't been told the sex of her grandchild. When she receives the news a second time, she despairs that the in-laws will be furious. Director Jafar Panahi ("The White Balloon") continues to make his point about the lives of Iranian women by crossing over multiple storylines in "The Circle."
LAURA:
As another female family member rushes down the hospital's spiral staircase to the street, she crosses paths with Nargess (Nargess Mamizadeh), Arezou (Maryiam Palvin Almani) and a third woman attempting to make a public phone call. When a man asks 'You two alone?' as he passes, the third friend demands an apology, creating a street incident which results in her arrest. Arezou and Nargess watch from a hiding place as they are already on the run. We learn that they've been released from prison, although never their crime. Arezou is afraid that her son couldn't handle seeing her after two years, while Nargess, only eighteen, just dreams of reaching Sarab, an edenic part of Iran where she'll reunite with her brother. They're also trying to reach a friend, Pari, for help.
Arezou insists Nargess take their money for the journey and vanishes. After dealing with all sorts of problems obtaining a ticket as a woman alone, Nargess takes five minutes to buy her brother a gift, but must flee when she sees police checking passengers getting on the bus. She finally finds Pari's house, but is told off by a male family member. As Nargess runs down the alley and out of the film, Pari (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani) sneaks out of her front door while her brother and father argue over her fate.
Pari visits a female friend (Monir Arab) selling tickets at a movie theater and we soon discover that these two also have been imprisoned. Pari's friend's husband obtained a second wife while she was jailed, yet she's comfortable with the idea and the second wife arrives and drives Pari to meet with another friend, an emergency room nurse (Elham Saboktakin). Pari is in dire straits as she's pregnant, but her friend, married to a doctor at the hospital, is too fearful of his reaction to help.
Pari walks the streets and sees a mother with a well dressed little girl as she enters a hotel lobby. When she exits, the little girl is crying, abandoned. Pari finds the mother (Fatemeh Naghavi) distraught, watching the scene from behind a car (reminding us of Arezou and Nargess earlier). She's trying to make a better life for her daughter, but always fails to really leave. This time she succeeds and cinematographer Bahram Badakshani's camera follows her as she says farewell to Pari and accepts a ride from a male stranger, a move that causes her to be pulled over at a roadblock where another woman (Mojgan Faramarzi), clearly a prostitute, is already being held. As this last woman is processed into prison, Panahi ironically suggests she may be the only free woman in his story.
Director/editor Jafar Panahi's Venice 2000 Golden Lion winner is a powerful statement about the oppression of women in Iran (banned within its own country), yet also celebrates their sisterhood. Panahi and writer Kambuzia Partovi suggest strong themes with such simple devices as unlit cigarettes. Their failure to tell us what these women have been jailed for strengthens the story because as we witness the difficulty being a woman in Iran brings to such simple tasks as buying a bus ticket, we realize that whatever their transgressions are, they would be viewed as trivial in Western society.
Cinematographer Bahram Badakshani employs a very fluid camera style as he tails his subjects through city streets. He and director Panahi visually reinforce the circular nature of the film with spiral staircases and round balconies. Badakshani captures many striking images, such as Nargess running through a terminal, billowing black and clutching a shirt box or an old balloon seller holding the hand of a tearful little girl as a wedding party streams by.
The women of "The Circle" will break your heart while opening your eyes to their plight.
A
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
laura@reelingreviews.com robin@reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 28721 X-RT-AuthorID: 1487 X-RT-TitleID: 1105687 X-RT-RatingText: A
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews