Deprecated: mb_convert_encoding(): Handling HTML entities via mbstring is deprecated; use htmlspecialchars, htmlentities, or mb_encode_numericentity/mb_decode_numericentity instead in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/super-cool-ad-inserter/inc/scaip-shortcode-inserter.php on line 37
Suffering automotive trouble en route through rural Iran, a city couple — a photographer and his wife (the wonderful Leila Hatami) — seek refuge in a tiny village. The husband leaves with the town’s sole male inhabitant to seek a car part while his wife, a former schoolteacher, stays to mind the hamlet’s children. On the surface, not much happens in Ali Reza Raisan’s attractively shot, quiet film set in a dusty hamlet whose starkness almost seems surreal. But the over the film’s lean 88 minutes, the wife’s personal transformation — never once vocalized — is profound, and is illustrated in final scenes that are surprisingly evocative and even creepy. Beyond its intimate narrative, Raisan’s film sketches a portrait of contemporary Iran, a country at once urbane and primitive, its people in a limbo between restrictive traditions based on community and the opportunities afforded by more Western and individual modernity. In Farsi with subtitles. Harris 
This article appears in Dec 30, 2004 – Jan 5, 2005.
