Any woman with a bedridden husband is going to fret more than the average female, but Tuba's spouse is low maintenance, compared to the rest of her problems. Tuba works daily at a grueling textile factory in Iran, returning home every night to deal with the rest of her problematic family, which includes: a pregnant daughter whose husband beats her regularly; a teenage son, who's been getting into trouble due to his burgeoning career in radical politics; and an older son who goes to great
lengths--such as attempting to sell the family's meager house--in order to get an engineering job in Japan as a means of getting out of Iran.
Ms. Bani-Etemad seems to have a firm hand on the social pulse on her nation, particularly the slowly changing roles of women in a place where change is eyed with both desire and suspicion.
The movie might lack the artistic accomplishment of better-known Iranian movies, but it tempers its melodrama with unflinching willingness to take us inside lives that otherwise would remain remote to us.
This splendid film is no mere polemic, for Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, often called the first lady of Iranian cinema, is above all an accomplished storyteller and dramatist who understands the evocative power of sound and image.
In the process of pushing the envelope of acceptance, Bani-Etemad carries off the neat trick of presenting an involving, beautifully cast film that portrays contemporary Iranian issues in a remarkably universal light.
With understated skill and absolute authenticity, the film builds with enough layers that by its powerful ending, you'll feel as if you have been kicked in the stomach.
Bani-Etemad's gift is her ability to make immediate the human struggle at the heart of a family caught in a time and place so unmoored from tradition that ritual has become cruelty.
Bani-Etemad shows us Iranian family life from the perspective of a nuclear family, one that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the ones we know and love.
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