One of Iran's most talented directors, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, came up with the story outline for The Day I Became A Woman (opening Dec 28). What a shame he didn't take the director's chair too.
His wife, Marzieh Meshkini, may have the female touch a story of the three ages of woman deserves, but she lacks her husband's talent with cast and camera and the dialogue she has scripted is so minimal it deprives us of the characterisation essential to these Iranian vignettes on humanity.
Hava (Fatemeh Cheragh Akhar) turns nine and is expected to behave like a woman, to the bewilderment of the child, and her friend; Ahoo (Shabnam Toloui) refuses to give up a cycle race despite her husband's threats; and old Hoora (Azizeh Sedighi) travels to town to buy all the mod-cons she could never afford before.
The message, that women in Iran are hard done by, is painfully obvious and there's little of the tenderness that Makhmalbaf brings to his own films.
The Day I Became A Woman
Cert: U
