In what will become an ever more self-referential turn, Vafamehr plays Marzieh, an avant-garde actress seeking to expatriate because her plays have been banned by the censors. She is well educated, middle class, and ideologically moderate, none of which are much of an advantage in contemporary Iranian society. Navigating the Kafkaesque immigration process for years, Marzieh is hoping to soon liquidate all her possessions to finance her move. Of course, complications arise.
Initially, Marzieh has a bit of good fortune. Attending an underground rave in the countryside with her friend Sadaf, Marzieh happened to be in the stables with Saman, the recently repatriated son of immigrants looking to make his fortune in Tehran. Given the unambiguous nature of their encounter, this scene probably did not help Marzieh’s case. However, the real scandal is the conduct of the morality police, terrorizing women like Sadaf for their unadorned heads.
Quickly Marzieh and Saman become something of an item. Despite his myriad of faults, Marzieh enjoys a somewhat pleasant interlude. Still, grim realities are ever-present in the margins of Sale, represented by a woman committing suicide rather face the disgrace of pregnancy out of wedlock, the whispered news of yet another colleague’s arrest, or simply the general sense of unease surrounding her life.
In truth, Marzieh is not always fun to be around. Flesh and blood humans are messy that way. In a sense, Sale is like Agnieszka Holland’s A Lonely Woman. In both films, the toxic repression of their societies metastasizes inside the respective protagonists, at least spiritually and in Marzieh’s case, physically as well.
Based on a limited sampling of Iranian films to screen on the festival circuit in recent years, Sale is a tad ambitious in the amount of sensitive subject matter it forthrightly addresses, including artistic censorship, drug use, romantic relationships, secular music, and tragically AIDS. We even hear the lashes administered on others which will also be in Vafamehr’s future unless sufficient pressure is brought upon the Islamist authorities to reverse course. As an artist, Moussavi should explore any area her characters take her to. In practical terms though, the extent that she does so is fairly bold.
Shot on location in Iran (with all the proper permits according to Moussavi), Sale was intentionally scrupulous about observing Islamic decorum throughout the production, aside perhaps from a few scenes of women without headscarves. Of course, one of the advantages of a police state is that the authorities do not have to justify a seemingly arbitrary decision. Frankly though, it seems clear Vafamehr is being punished for the manner in which Sale holds a mirror up to Iranian society, presenting a vision the government does not like to see.
While her sentence could be dubbed the harshest review ever, Vafamehr is forcefully compelling as her namesake. Smart but flawed, she conveys Marzieh’s mounting frustration with visceral power that literally bursts out of her in one unforgettable scene. In a less showy role, Asha Mehrabi is also very engaging as the well-intentioned but essentially helpless Sadaf.
