When
are the dreams of children shattered by the realities of adulthood?
Based on a true story, The Girl in the Sneakers
(Dokhtari ba kafsh-haye-katani ) focuses on how two fifteen-year-olds
grow up within a week due to personal traumas in Iran. Rassul
Sadr Ameli, the director, makes the film in the hope that
the story will be of help "in dealing with the subjective
preoccupations of a number of the young people." When the
movie begins, a girl Tadaei and a boy Aideen (played by Pegah
Ahangarani and Majid Hajizadeh) are walking together in a
park in Tehran; they first met in the park some ten days ago,
and this is their third or fourth date. Aideen's dream is
to travel around the world forever with a companion; Tadaei,
who appears not to accept his fantasy, is clearly fascinated
by the scenario. But soon they are stopped by park police,
taken to the police station for questioning, and criminal
prosecution against Aideen is likely if Tadaei turns out to
be pregnant. Since she is a virgin, charges are dropped. Parents
then bawl them out. Aideen, as he later reports, goes to a
relative’s villa, and he learns about the responsibilities
of life during the excursion. Tadaei, however, is heartbroken.
She refuses to eat; rather than going to school, she wanders
around Tehran in white sneakers, trying to reach Aideen by
telephone at numerous intervals. Her journey is a window into
life in Tehran some twenty years after the Islamic Revolution.
Most men turn out to be untrustworthy, but the women try to
be helpful. Her first encounter is with a man who wants to
have sex with her, but he is unable to take advantage of her
naïveté because his wife is unexpectedly present at home.
On a bus, Tadaei pretends that she has leukemia, prompting
female passengers to make all sorts of comments and suggestions,
including the aphorism, "There’s not much to life." Denied
a hotel room because she is too young, Tadaei orders ice cream
and a coke from the waiter in the hotel lobby; his rudeness,
however, provokes a momentary dream in which she retaliates
by hitting him over the head a the coke bottle and pushing
him through the hotel window. Next, she buys a chocolate bar
from a street urchin, who introduces Tadaei to his "mother,"
and in due course the mother puts her up for the night in
a shantytown hovel. When Tadaei emerges from the hovel in
the middle of the night, she is nearly raped, but the mother
comes to her aid, and eventually Tadaei returns to the park
at midnight. Aideen then appears, tells her that his dreams
have changed but not his love for her, and Tadaei returns
home at last. To an non-Iranian filmviewer observer, the wandering
will appear to be a metaphor for contemporary Iran. Paternalistic
restrictions on personal liberty have not changed the basic
decency of Iranian women, who in the movie have much better
control over their husbands than the clerics. Meanwhile, the
revolution has done little to change a class structure in
which the rich live in one world, the poor in another. MH
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