Sexy and rebellious, Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance takes interesting risks in touching upon the reckless allure of youthful abandon, drug use and lesbianism in the midst a male dominated hegemony.
Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy dazzle as Atafeh and Shireen, young Iranian beauties fighting for the freedom to love one another in the midst of a culturally oppressive climate. The girls are portrayed as normal teenagers, struggling against authority and party hopping through the vivacious Tehrani underground.
Drugs, booze, and run-ins with the law color the scenes, but the frivolity is coupled with darkness. Shireen has legal issues to grapple with, Atafeh’s crazed, fresh-from-rehab brother, Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) has eyes for Shireen. The plot does become a bit clunky when Mehran joins the ranks of the Morality Police and creepily surveys his family in order to keep them in line with the doctrines of Islam. Though melodramatic at times, the film succeeds in depicting Iranian youth as brave and passionate.
Sure to leave mouths gaping, the love scenes in Circumstance are deliriously sensual. In the opening seconds, a shimmering torso sways slowly to ethnic music and close shots of skin and hips tease and entice.
Visually, the film is striking in its subtlety. Reds, grays and blues alternate from scene to scene to contrast cold, misogynistic reality with the exuberance of youth. Long shots through doorways reflect the inner imprisonment of the girls. Entire conversations are silently relayed through the eyes of the characters. Plot points are revealed in sparse dialogue or simply from taking in every detail of a scene.
Keshavarz packed so much conflict into Circumstance that it gets hard to feel the scope of the characters’ suffering, particularly as Mehran becomes a radical caricature of fundamentalism. All the same, there are heartbreaking moments, and the romance between Atafeh and Shireen is solid. They are gorgeous and sultry, in every effeminate way – and it only seems natural when their close bond grows closer.
The film is at its best when subversive rebellion intermixes with the harsh regulations of Tehran and we get glimpses of hidden video shops and raging clubs in the city’s underground. The dream sequences are hypnotic, particularly Shireen’s fantasies about Atafeh’s future stardom and a hotel room in Dubai. There is nothing extraneous about the acting in the film and there is just the right amount of understated action – the audience may shiver with its intensity.
Circumstance should spark some heated debates – particularly about gender roles in Iran, the far-reaching influence of western culture, and the pressure placed on middle-eastern citizens to conform. Keshavarz obviously took great lengths to depict these struggles with careful eloquence, an exhibit of filmmaking at its finest.
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