If
you have seen Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, you have some idea how torturous divorce proceedings get in
Iran. Ordinarily, that would be to the advantage of a crummy, lay-about husband
like Siyavash, but he would have been better off with an easy no-fault
California-style split. Instead, he will wind up dead in Kaveh Mazaheri’s short
film Retouch, the winner of the Best
Narrative Short Award at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Maryam
does all the housework and is the primary bread winner in her family, while
Siyavash basically leaches off her. Her work involves digitally airbrushing the
cleavage, slightly bare shoulders, and infinitesimally visible hairlines from
celebrity magazine photos. You see, she understands how to make inconvenient
details disappear. One day before work, Siyavash decides to start bench
pressing free weights again, but he is way too ambitious. Rather than help lift
the barbell crushing his windpipe, Maryam lets gravity have its way. However,
on her return from work, she will have to properly re-set the scene.
Although
only twenty minutes in duration, Retouch is
a powerful film about acute relationship dysfunction, much in the tradition of
many of the excellent recent Iranian film imports, like Farhadi’s latest Oscar
winner, The Salesman and Nima Javidi’s
Melbourne. Although not expressly
political, the sort of censorship Maryam must do as part of her daily routine
is definitely problematic. It also implies much about the inequality between
the sexes in Iran that Maryam must capitalize on such an extreme opportunity to
regain her freedom.
