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Two Women (1999)
Two Women is in no way related
to the memorable 1961 Vittorio De Sica film that won Sophia Loren an Academy Award. One
wonders whether the director of the current effort knows that fine film whose title she
has now bestowed on her own new work. The world that Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani
portrays in Two Women feels profoundly different from the West; she at once
offers a glimpse into the exotic socio-religious context of post-revolutionary Iran, a
heartfelt plea for social change, and, unfortunately, a disappointing, unbalanced script
that in the end elicits more annoyance than sympathy.
The opening scene in a Tehran architect's office offers an instant
contrast: it's a modern office that could be in New York or Paris, but the woman who
answers the phone is wearing hijab, the Muslim woman's garments - a long dress
that completely covers the body, a khimar to cover the head. The men, on the
other hand, are dressed no differently from men anywhere in the western world. To the
western eye, at least, the anachronistic contrast provides an immediate key to the theme
of the film.
Shortly thereafter we meet Roya (Marila ZareŽi), one of the eponymous
women, herself an architect, wearing hijab - and a hard hat - as she supervises
on a highrise construction site. Roya and her husband are shown to have a modern
relationship of equals. But then we are flashed back to her college friendship with
Fereshteh (Niki Karimi), a highly intelligent woman from a small town background. After
what seems like more exposition of the college period than is justified, Roya becomes a
minor character and the focus shifts completely to Fereshteh. Her father forces her to
quit school and return to their home town, where conservative religious and social values
prevail.
Fereshteh is ultimately pressured into marriage with a man not of her
choosing. It is the plight of the intelligent and educated woman trapped in the highly
restrictive traditional Muslim position of obedient wife to all-powerful husband that
forms the core of the film. (That the film could be made at all is indicative of
moderation of fundamentalist Muslim control in Iran.)
But the screenplay, by Milani, undercuts her powerful thesis. The
significant male characters - Fereshteh's father, husband, and a stalker who harasses her
- are never fleshed-out. They are used to illustrate the power positions of men over women
in Iranian society, but we get no sense of them as real people with complicated or
conflicted feelings - the humanity gets buried under the symbols. (And the solution to
arguments for Iranian men is repeatedly depicted as drawing a knife in a threatening
manner.)
When the father who has limited Fereshteh's options begins to
support her in her conflict with her husband, the change of his character is unexplained
by the circumstances and not convincing. The stalker, while having symbolic value, seems
throughout like a mechanical plot device and smart, independent Fereshteh's failure to
deal with him more effectively stretches credulity.
But it is the endless sameness with which the conflict is presented,
the whiney, argumentative tone between Fereshteh and her father, then with her husband,
that becomes tiresome and erodes sympathy for the character and her situation. It may be
real, but it doesn't make good drama.
Milani's work here has passion, if not finesse. There are more than a
few moments that make you wish she had better control of the overall sweep of the film: a
morning-after-the-wedding pan from the bride's resigned face as she stands at a window,
back over the wedding bed where her new husband still sleeps; the reunion of the two women
after some years, Fereshteh in full black chadour standing with her two sons - an image
that both encapsulates the change in her position since she last saw her friend and the
radically different directions their lives have taken.
A melodramatic score used amateurishly, sloppy editing and choppy
continuity, and poorly executed subtitles further detract from the effectiveness of Two
Women. Still, the passion and the message blaze with a conviction sorely lacking from
most more slickly produced contemporary films.
- Arthur Lazere
