IrFFNY ’19: I Want to Dance

If you dance through the streets of New York, like you are in a vintage MGM musical, you will get a lot of quizzical looks, but people will also appreciate your eccentricity. Not so in Tehran, where the authorities are distinctly unamused by eccentricity and hardliners still maintain a hostile stance towards music in general. However, Bahram Farzaneh has the mother of all earworms stuck in his head and he can share it with others in Bahman Farmanara’s I Want to Dance (trailer here), which screens during the 1^st Iranian Film Festival New York.

After a minor accident, Farzaneh can suddenly hear an infectious Persian dance song in his head. It is so vivid, it is like he is picking up a radio signal. The widowed writer with decades-long writer’s block is not concerned by this turn of events. He just wants to dance. If people lean in close enough, they can hear it too.

Suddenly, the morose Farzaneh has a spring in his step. In the past, he might have been alarmed by the unnamed woman—of questionable repute—who runs a rather casual extortion con on him, but the rejuvenated Farzaneh converts her into an unlikely platonic friend. He even agrees to write her story, even though he has no idea what it is, but the creative license he takes is inspiring—and liberating.

There is more whimsy in Dance than you usually find in Persian cinema, but there is still a serious undertone of elegiac sadness. Due to the occasional flashforward, we understand things maybe do not work for Farzaneh as we might hope, but that old cat still takes those lemons and makes lemonade.

Maybe we are making an allegorical reach (if so, why stop now?), but to an outsider, it looks like there are parallels to be drawn between Farzaneh’s big dancing in the street musical number and the Green Revolution protests. One minute everyone standing shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing a moment of glorious camaraderie and the next minute, it is like it never happened. Yet, Farzaneh still has the song in his heart.

Nevertheless, the really bittersweet stuff involves Farzaneh’s undefinable relationship with the woman. Reza Kianian and Mahnaz Afshar develop some wonderfully ambiguous, sly bantering chemistry together. Omid Sohrabi’s wistful screenplay avoids most of the standard issue clichés, like “Madame,” Farzaneh’s torch-carrying neighbor lady, who chooses to befriend the mystery lady and get in on their game rather than resenting her as a rival.

I Want to Dance is either considerably sadder or quirkier than this review makes it sound. Somehow, Farmanara balances the vibe on a knife’s edge, vacillating between the two moods. As an added bonus, the big centerpiece musical number is a real showstopper. Frankly, the film addresses all kinds of hot button issues, most notably including police conduct, gender inequalities, and mental health treatment, but it never feels political. Highly recommended, I Want to Dance screens this Saturday (1/12), as part of the 1^st IrFFNY, at the IFC Center.

IrFFNY ’19: Tale of the Sea

A writer ought to take satisfaction from the publication of his work, but it doesn’t work that way when the authorities censor and bowdlerize books arbitrarily. Alas, Taher Mohebi will not find much consolation on the home front either in Bahman Farmanara’s Tale of the Sea (trailer here), the opening night film of the inaugural Iranian Film Festival New York.

Mohebi suffered from a trauma-induced schizophrenic breakdown, but he is now sufficiently stable to return home. The problem is his wife Jaleh does not want him back. In fact, she wants to divorce the Gloomy Gus. However, his concerned doctor convinces her to humor the “Maestro,” at least for the near term.

Unaware of Jaleh’s frustrations, Mohebi slips back into his old absent-minded habits. He also starts hallucinating encounters with long-departed friends. However, things come to a head when Parvaneh, the daughter of Jaleh’s estranged best friend, now deceased, requests permission to visit.

Tale is an elegiac film several times over, dedicated to a number of Farmanara’s fondly remembered fellow artists, particularly Abbas Kiarostami, whom Mohebi calls out by name at one point in the picture. It is all about coming to terms with loss, disappointment, and failure in the twilight of life. Tale is definitely a meditative film, but Farmanara also rather boldly and openly slips in plot points involving Mohebi’s conflicts with censorship and the travails of his former student Amir Dashti, who is hunted and beaten by the secret police.

Farmanara himself plays Mohebi with the befuddled elegance Alec Guinness might have brought to the role in an Ealing comedy. He is charming and dignified, but it is easy to understand why his wife finds him insufferable. Yet, viewers will still sympathize with him when he finally faces the full totality of his life’s decisions.

Fatemah Motamed-Aria is emotionally brittle and intense as the long-suffering Jaleh, but Leila Hatami really lowers the boom as Parvaneh, an innocent born of scandal, almost like a character out of Hawthorne novels. Ali Mosaffa (Farhani’s The Past) is solid but somewhat under-employed as the conscientious doctor, but veteran thesp Ali Nassirian adds sly grace as the ghost or vision of Mohebi’s friend Hooshang.

Farmanara says quite a bit in Tale, while keeping up deceptively simple appearances. Although it is not an overtly allegorical film, it is not much of a stretch to argue Mohebi represents a generation of artists who did not get what they expected from the Iranian history they lived through. Very highly recommended, Tale of the Sea screens this Thursday (1/10), kicking off the 1^st IrFFNY, at the IFC Center.