QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES

Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadya) is a nurse, and the widowed mother of unruly prepubescent Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi). He smokes, pick up fights and jams the school lock with a match, leaving 700 students confined inside the building. School principal Samkhanian (Maziar Seyyedi) is determined to expel the boy, but Mahnmaz begs him for a second chance. She dismisses her son’s behaviour as adolescent whim. He eventually gives Aliyar a second change, with severe repercussions.

Our protagonist is in a relationship with handsome ambulance driver Hamid (Payman Maadi). He has promised to marry her, yet he harbours a secret guaranteed to shake the family to the core. Manhnaz has a daughter of around eight years of age, the quiet and sensitive Neda, and a reliable younger sister, the beautiful Mehri (Maziar Seyyedi). Her doting mother (Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee) too is often around, lending a hand with the children, and offering an inconvenient piece of family advice.

This is a movie with more twists and turns than a cheap garden rose. It mostly relies on surprising viewers with sudden new allegiances, knee-jerk character reactions and explosive revelations. The web of intrigue is so multilayered, with so many unpredictable characters and one twist after the other, that it becomes easily forgotten. This is a movie that tries to discuss so many topics – single parenthood, grandmotherhood, sisterhood, marriage, schooling, and much more – that its ultimate message becomes heavily diluted. What started out as a tale of failed motherhood eventually develops into a banal revenge story.

While hooking viewers, this over-reliance on the surprise factor comes at the expense of authenticity and relatability. Mahnaz actions are neither laudable nor credible. She’s a terrible nurse, shouting on her mobile phone while applying an injection in a patient, or dismissing protocol in the operating theatre. And she’s barely the role model of a mother: smoking and throwing tantrums in front of her children. Aliyar’s problems are a byproduct of his turbulent relationship to his mother. The word choice in the film title reveals that Mahnaz’s motherly instincts are secondary to her womanhood (this is why the film is not called Mother and Child). In fact, her dysfunctional behaviour could even land her in hot water with the government authorities.

Nevertheless, the male director asks viewers that they pledge their allegiance to erratic and vindicative Mahnaz. A shabby ending intended to offer a message of redemption instead elicits indignation. Mahnaz has done absolutely nothing in order to atone for her mistakes. So why should anyone give her a second chance, or even the benefit of doubt?

Morality issues aside, Woman and Child is not particularly original. It shares countless commonalities with Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2011). Both films deal with a child caught between multiple allegiances, the repercussions of divorce and single parenting, and are abruptly thrown into disarray by a tragic and shocking death roughly halfway through the story. Additionally, both Roustaee and Farhadi shine a light on the Iranian court system, which favours honour ahead of accountability, and the complicated dynamics and ethics of revenge.

Woman and Child just premiered in the Official Competition of 78th Cannes International Film Festival. The 35-year-old Roustaee’s previous feature film Leila’s Brothers won the Fipresci’s Critics in Cannes three years ago. It earned the director a six-month prison sentence and a five-year filming ban, but both punishments were eventually lifted. The Iranian regime has a double-edged relationship with its cinema. It routinely seeks to censor it, while also using it as a powerful promotion tool.

Saeed Roustaee’s fourth feature won’t ruffle too many feathers with the Iranian government because it isn’t particularly political. In fact, the court system is portrayed as reliable and unusually expedient. And the portrayal of women is hardly revolutionary: the female characters wear a hijab even in private. This is a turbulent yet anodyne family drama. It does not deliver any indictments on the brutal regime that has ruled Iran for nearly half a century.