The Day I Became a Woman

Marzieh Meshkini's debut film tells of three women, three phases of life, and three destinies. And it tells of something that is by no means taken for granted by Iranian women: the right to self-fulfillment in a patriarchal religious society. By Andreas Busche

The Makhmalbaf Film House
Film clip: The Day I Became a Woman

​​A woman cloaked in black cycles for her life. Not literally, but that's basically what it comes down to. Her name is Ahoo and she is taking part in a bicycle race, but she is pedaling against far more than just the other competitors.

She is fleeing from a marriage with a man she doesn't love. She is fleeing from traditions that have been passed down for generations in a country to whose rules she is no longer willing to submit. Hot on her heels follow her husband, a mullah, her father, and finally her brothers.

Each puts in a brief appearance, on horseback and desperately trying to keep up with the girl's dogged determination to fight against the heat, her exhaustion and her powerlessness.

Pain whose story must be told

No name has made such a deep impression on Iranian cinema as that of Makhmalbaf. The productivity of all generations of the Makhmalbaf family is a unique phenomenon in world cinema. Mohsen Makhmalbaf (most recent film: "Kandahar", 2001) is one of the leading figures in Iranian film, his daughter Samira ("Blackboards", 2000) has shown great promise, and even sixteen-year-old Hana caused an international sensation two years ago with her debut film "Joy of Madness."

Marzieh Meshkini, director of "The Day I Became a Woman," is Mohsen's second wife, and the influence of his imagery and penchant for exaggerated scenes can be felt in her film. This first film captivates us with a method of storytelling that is free from any artificiality.

What she shows in her images is not overburdened with symbolism – like the kind of Near Eastern poetry that Western film critics tend to look for in Iranian films -, but is instead determined by an almost prosaic obviousness.

"The Day I Became a Woman" gives us snapshots, clear-cut situations and stances, involving problems that we in the West are hardly aware of. The absurdly comical and sometimes even surreal moments in the film provide a kind of vent for a pain that is hard to put into words, but that must nonetheless be given expression.

Marzieh Meshkini has chosen three individual destinies to depict in her film, in order to sketch a portrait of the life circumstances of Iranian women. They are three stories of equal significance, which are not interconnected in terms of content, but whose narratives have certain points in common.

The film takes place on the Iranian Kish peninsula, where two diametrically opposed worlds collide. In the early 90s the government declared Kish a duty-free zone in order to encourage tourism in the region. The consequences can be felt in Meshkini's film. The modern architecture that now dominates the tourist hub seems utterly out of place in the dusty desert landscape.

Against this background of contradictions – even on a purely aesthetic level – Meshkini offers her sparely laconic criticism. Capitalism has come to the "modern" part of Kish, and the fact that this is a new, at first entirely value-free, experience for the Iranian population, especially for the socially excluded women, is evidenced in the third episode of "The Day I Became a Woman."

Excluded from life

A group of children sit at the airport exit and wait for passengers that might need their help. The procedure is the same every time: as soon as a plane lands, the group rushes into the main building en masse with their luggage carts. Whoever is arriving here surely must have some pocket change to spare, even for them.

This time, one of the boys has won the jackpot, even if he wasn't the fastest one on the scene. The old woman in a wheelchair who's last in line has inherited some money, and her fondest wish is to taste the pleasures of consumption one last time to their fullest before her days are over. So she makes her way directly to the shopping center.

It soon becomes clear that she is in possession of enormous capital with which to fulfill her desires. Soon she's dragging a whole gaggle of children in her wake, along with a caravan of goods: the backdrop to a whole life, which is then arranged like a stage set on the beach. The bourgeois couch with TV set and the mirrored cabinet seem like alien elements against the clear blue of the sea.

The title of Meshkini's film refers to the first episode, the story of a girl named Hava. Just like every day her friend Hassan comes over to ask her to come out and play. Only today, the morning of her ninth birthday, nothing will ever be the same again.

Her mother and grandmother forbid Hava to see the boy. According to her religion, today she is a woman and must henceforward obey society's rules. And that means no contact with boys. As a birthday present Hava's grandmother has bought her a chador, the veil worn by Muslim women. Her initiation as a woman can begin.

Meshkini depicts this incursion of societal conventions into the life of a child through the girl's own eyes. Hava refuses to understand what is supposed to have suddenly happened to her life overnight, and with her childish, irresistible logic she elicits from her mother a temporary reprieve until noon so she can play with Hassan for one last time.

When the shadow of the stick she has stuck into the ground as a marking disappears, a new life will begin for Hava. But the last hours the children spend together are suddenly overshadowed by a different set of circumstances.

Hassan's mother has now forbidden her son to play with Hava, and the boy has no choice but to speak with his little friend through the bars of his window. On the beach a few older boys are building a raft. As we later learn, it is the raft with which the old woman will float her new possessions home.

Two girls who have taken part in the bicycle race tell the old woman about Ahoo and her fight against her own kin. The story comes full circle. Have a look out to the sea, watching the rafts. The day she became a woman has not only changed her own life.

Andreas Busche, © Fluter.de 2004

Translation from German: Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

"The Day I Became a Woman" (Roozi khe zan shodam) Iran 2000, Director: Marzieh Meshkini, Screenplay: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Marzieh Meshkini, with Fatemeh Cherag Akhar, Shabnam Toloui, Azizeh Sedighi, Hassan Nebhan, Shahr Banou Sisizadeh, Ameneh Passand.

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