Circumstance Dir. Maryam Keshavarz

[Participant Media; 2011]

Styles: coming-of-age, drama
Others: Morvern Callar, High Art, Fish Tank

Set in Iran (but shot in Lebanon), writer/director Maryam Keshavarz makes an auspicious debut with her lush feature Circumstance. The Iranian-American Keshavarz drew on her own experiences, as well as those of family and friends, to build her story of adolescence and forbidden desire in an upper-class Iranian family. The Iranian actors were culled from Canada, California, and France, among other places, and all of them, Keshavarz included, knew they were giving up the ability to return to Iran by making this film. Exile is a hefty price to pay for art, and thankfully Circumstance, though at times uneven, is a rich and layered film that lives up to its promise.

The story centers on best friends Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), women in the throes of their young lives, but seemingly hemmed in on all sides. In many ways, they are typical teenagers, vacillating between obedience and rebellion, discarding old personas and inhibitions, cautiously, behind closed doors. But this is no John Hughes angst; they live under the scrutiny not just of parents, but also of a rigid, conservative theocracy. Disobedience can, and does, carry grave consequences, and that threat colors their furtive transgressions. The underground dance clubs and parties have a hollow, jittery glamour, and the young women, particularly Atafeh, careen through these scenes with brazen, sexually charged anger. They have fought hard to possess their own bodies, and do so, if only in narrow confines. Here their lust for life brims over and finds expression in full-throated sing-alongs, as well as their evolving feelings for one another.

I find it interesting that many writers feel the need to point out the marketability of the amorous relationship between the two women (e.g., “for those not interested in peering behind Iran’s curtain the lesbian relationship may be a draw!”). Their intimacy is part of the story, but feels organic rather than overtly sexual. The girls are sisters as much as they are lovers, though their encounters are languid, erotic, and surprisingly mature. Keshavarz has found a strong collaborator in DP Brian Rigney Hubbard, whose rich visuals bring beauty to the forefront. The camera’s gaze lingers, but it’s driven by compassion not voyeurism. In contrast, the film is intermittently cut with security camera footage of the girls, indicating they are being watched even while supposedly safe. This is explained (poorly) in the end, but works better as a mystifying visual metaphor that adds a jolt of discomfort.

The film veers a bit off course in the third act, when Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) increasingly asserts his presence. Recently returned from drug rehab, Mehran struggles to find meaning beyond his former music studies and ends up turning to Islam. His addictive tendencies are displaced into religious fanatacism, and he begins applying pressure and rigidity to his once-liberal, educated, and relatively relaxed family. For confusing reasons, his parents cave in, and Atafeh becomes a trapped stranger in her own home. Mehran sets his sights on marrying the doe-eyed Shireen, and plot kicks in to complicate the lives of our young heroines.

Keshavarz is a Sundance Lab alum, and I felt a guiding hand in the change of narrative style in the latter part of the film. It is a testament to the cast that the plot contrivances don’t pull the film down. Reza Sixo Safai is magnetic; Nikohl Boosheri gives the lusty, embodied Atafeh the necessary kick of temper, adolescence, and fear; and Sarah Kazemy’s Shireen is sympathetic as the passive, willowy beauty caught between them. The film’s smaller moments are the most memorable: Shireen lingering at the piano, a family picnic by the sea, a very funny sequence where the young Iranians dub a sex scene for a bootleg DVD of Sex and the City. Although the conclusion is incomplete, Circumstance remains a strong and moving film. It’s playful, erotic, and still weighty, though politics never overwhelm the characters. They inhabit a wantonly cruel, restrictive world, but manage to find solace and companionship in very human pleasures.

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