Director: Marzieh Meshkini
"I made this film because of my sensitivity toward women's issues. Without trying to sound like a feminist, since I do not consider myself a feminist, I believe in equal rights for women and my film advocates this equality." Marzieh Meshkini
The Iranian film The Day I Became a Woman is a remarkable first feature by Marzieh Meshkini about the way that woman, in different stages of their lives, ‘become women’ in Iranian society.
The film is broken up into three episodes that can roughly be considered different stages in the life of women in Iran.
The first episode features an eight-year-old girl named Havva (Fatemeh Cheragh Akhtar) who will officially turn nine -- the age when she must put away her toys and become a woman – at noon. It’s sort of a witty High Noon-type episode with womanhood at stake rather than a gunfight. Eve’s grandmother instructs her that she must adhere to the strict Islamic dress code and that now she can no longer play with boys. The episode is really about how she bargains with her grandmother to play for one more fleeting hour with the boys until the sun is directly over head.
The second episode involves a young woman (Shabnam Toloui) who is challenged by her husband for riding a bicycle -- an activity that is forbidden in Iran. While she rides she is not only challenged by the other women in what appears to be a race but she is pursued by her husband on horseback who vehemently insist that she immediately dismount and come back home with him. She refuses and is threatened with divorce. In her own stubborn way she is attempting to become an independent woman by refusing the orders of a ludicrous patriarchal law--but she knows that there is no way she will be able to win the battle.
Both in the exhilarating way the scenes are shot and also because of what’s at stake in the woman’s quest to make a statement the second episode is one of the most remarkably cinematic 25 minutes I have even witnessed in a film. The idea that a woman cannot enjoy a simple recreation is both horrifying and odd. Director Maehkini – who is a woman – makes a major statement yet it doesn’t feel heavy-handed. She simply presents us with the facts and lets us draw our own conclusions.
The third episode involves an elderly woman (Azizeh Seddighi) who goes on a shopping spree and buys all the expensive household items she never had. She is helped along the way by a group of young boys who cart her and her goods around from store to store. The episode is slightly surreal -- especially when they set up all of her furniture on a sandy beach and wait to take her to a ship in the harbor -- and it is definitely the lightest of the bunch.
Each of the episodes stand in contrast to one another but can also be seen as a continuation from one stage of women’s life to the next. One woman is at the beginning, another is at the end and one is right in the middle and one thing is clear: Non of them has the kind of control women in most other parts of the world have over their lives.
The film is directed in a simple, direct manner but the themes are handled with such skill and intelligence that it’s hard to believe that this is a first film. Part of the success may have to do with the fact that the director’s husband and the screenwriter of the film is Mohsen Makhmalbaf who is a gifted director in his own right. If anything it proves that talent certainly runs in the family because one of their daughters Samira Malkmalbaf is also an award winning director whose second film Blackboards is forthcoming later this year.
- Matt Langdon