My tickets for the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival!
Woman and Child (Iran-France-Germany, 2025)
- Saeed Roustaee, director and co-scriptwriter (with Azad Jafarian)
- Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi, Soha Niasti, Maziar Seyedi, Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee, Hassan Pourshirazi, Sinan Mohebi
- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program
A confession: I did not originally plan to attend a Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of Woman and Child. Rather, a booking error resulted in my coming by a ticket. But after seeing that it was directed by the same helmer as Leila's Brothers (Iran, 2022), which I had viewed -- and got much out of -- at a previous edition of the HKIFF, I decided that the mistake might be a blessing in disguise.
Made after Saeed Roustaee had served a six-month prison sentence and a filmmaking ban imposed on him by the Iranian government -- for entering Leila's Brothers in the Cannes Film Festival! -- had been lifted, Woman and Child was made with the approval of the same regime. Something that I find interesting since this drama centering on a widow with two children who lives with her mother and sister is one that yet another Iranian film that doesn't seem to sugercoat the lives of Iranian people, and their everyday struggles.
Mahnaz (portrayed by Parinaz Izadyar) is a hospital nurse who is being romantically pursued by a freelance ambulance driver named Hamid (who comes in the form of Saeed Roustaee film regular, Payman Maadi). Although Hamid's pressuring her to get married to him causes some stress, Mahnaz seems to harbour genuine affections for him. And, also, rather inexplicably, her son, Aliyah (played by Sinan Mohebi), who's the most annoying child I've seen in a film since Tan Chui Mui's Barbarian Invasion (Malaysia-Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2021)'s Yu Zhou.
So part of me was happy to see him being taken out of the picture fairly early into the movie. And somewhat inexplicable to me that this development could leave Mahnaz so incredibly distraught that she literally faints at one point in the film. And, also, becomes not only so emotionally numbed as well as upset that she neglects her much less annoying daughter, Neda (played by Arshida Dorostkar) as well as her own self and others: because, contrary to the title of the film, there's more than one child in the picture.
As the reviewer for Variety complained, "none of [Mahnaz's] actions makes the slightest sense". While I agree with that assessment, I'm less in agreement that it's not completely understandable. Because, well, humans can be incredibly illogical, especially with regards to human relations and when powerful emotions are triggered. Which certainly is in the case in Woman and Child.
How you feel about this will undoubtedly affect your overal assessment of this offering that, for me, was involving and actually pretty emotionally gripping throughout. Incidentally, I think that if the title hadn't already been taking, "Woman on a Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" might have been a good one for this movie! And Mahnaz's multi-dimensional interactions with her mother (portrayed by Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee) and younger sister Mehri (played by Soha Niasti) that alternately help to relieve and heal but at other times further threaten to drive her over the edge are fascinating to behold.
More than by the way, I think Woman and Child would have been a better film overall if it had focused more on the females in it as the males are, for the most part, its least watchable characters. At the same time, the scenes in Aliyah's (all boys) school and the vocational school next door are also very well conceived and shot indeed. So maybe it's more that the work would have been better served with less of Aliyah and Hamid in the picture; just as Mahnaz would have been better served with less of them in her life!
My rating for the film: 8.0
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