QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM KARLOVY VARY
The action takes place in Afghanistan roughly at the turn if the century, when the Taliban ruled the nation with a rod of iron. Leila (Fereshteh Hosseini) is a mother desperately seeking her seven-year-old son Omid (whose name means “hope”). After getting consistently harassed for leaving the house without her husband (who was killed killed by the fundamentalist regime), she cuts her long hair and glues it to her face. The makeshift beard is combined with male clothes in order to make Leila pass for a man, making her search a little more viable (if a lot more dangerous: she is guaranteed to face a gruesome execution should someone uncover her tricks).
What starts out as a twisted version of Samson (where manhood is measured by the beard instead of the hair) soon lapses into absurdity, despite an opening card promising viewers that the story is “inspired by true events”. Leila is eventually led to the titular Cinema Jazirah (Farsi for “island”), a remote entertainment house for pleasure-seeking males. Despotic Master Waheed (Ali Karimi) is in charge of the facilities. The attractions include a “cinema” – a tube television showing James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) – and a cabaret performance by Sanjar (Hamid Karimi), a clean-shaven and highly effeminate crossdresser. A group of children aged roughly the same as Leila’s missing son live in the building. They are presumably prostitutes and/or slaves, even if their exact function is never revealed. All we know is that one of them could replace Sanjar when they grow old. That’s barely an enviable prospect – even in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The two main plots (Leila’s mission to find her son and the bizarre children’s harem) and the two crossdressers (Leila and Sanjar) predictably meet as the male-clad woman reaches the Cinema. She is hopeful that she will find Omid there. The final resolution is clunky and meaningless, leaving audiences with a lingering question in their head (“what the hell???”), a bitter taste in their mouth, and an empty sensation in their heart. And this isn’t the only problem with this silly interminable movie, lasting 129 minutes. The acting is subpar. The child actors are mostly wooden and the adults lifeless. Even the lead – experienced Afgan-Iranian thespian Fereshteh Hosseini – fails to convey any emotions from behind her ugly beard. The scarce and trite dialogue helps to ensure that no performer is memorable. That’s except for Akhlaghirad, who shall be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
This is one of the most offensive trans/crossdressing representations in cinema since Buffallo Bill (the dancing serial killer of Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, 1991). Akhlaghirad’s Sanjar twerks grotesquely with a lewd and evil expression permanently printed on his face. He repeatedly intimidates and humiliates his child successors (he calls them “midgets”), and screams hysterically upon finding out that he’s not getting married (note: the use of the misogynistic word is intentional here as this a highly exaggerated portrayal of femininity). He shouts out loud: “I’m looking for my Gameboy”, in a reference to his missing videogame. And he dances in front of a large poster of Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932). The innuendo is neither subtle nor commendable. J.K. Rowling would be impressed.
The elegant cinematography is the Cinema Jazireh‘s only saving grace. Iranian cinematographer Adib Sobhani blends the hot colours of the desert with the lifeless grey of the collapsing houses to excellent results. The baby blue colour of the burkas, dresses and internal walls injects some life into the harsh and bleak environment. The film, which takes place in western Afghanistan, was probably filmed in eastern Iran – regions sharing the same language and a similar geography. The Persian nation is one of the production countries, alongside the director’s native Turkey, plus Bulgaria and Romania. The dance numbers – however deplorable in their representation – are filmed with vim and vigour.
Cinema Jazireh just premiered in the Crystal Globe section of the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
