Maine film festival debuts vignettes on women in Iran Meshkini work raises global questions

If you’re anything like me, then you can never remember which of the two I-95 exits to take to get to Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville. For the record, it’s Exit 34. But the fact is, if you’re going to the Maine International Film Festival, in its fourth year at Railroad Square, there’s no telling where you’ll end up. Two nights ago, the film “The Day I Became a Woman” took a full house of audience members to the heart of being a woman – oppressed, defiant and determined – in modern Iran.

The remarkable debut film of Marziyeh Meshkini is split into three vignettes about living in a country where Islamic rule controls the bodies, freedoms and economics of women. The first segment is the poignant story of Hara, a girl who awakes on her ninth birthday to learn from her mother and grandmother that she is now a woman. As such, she will not be permitted to play any longer with boys, including her best friend Hassan, who waits at the house gate so the two can go buy ice cream and play along the shoreline of Kish, an idyllic but restrictive island community.

Hara cuts a deal with the two elder women after explaining that she was born in the afternoon and, since it’s still morning, she is not yet 9, and should be allowed her proper playtime. Her grandmother agrees and, to assure the girl’s duty, stabs a stick into the sand. When its shadow is no longer apparent, it will be time for Hara to return home and cloak herself in a chador.

In a series of foiled attempts to play with Hassan, Hara finally finds him behind the bars of his own house, where he will run the risk of his teacher’s wrath if he doesn’t finish his homework. The two urgently share mounds of sour tamarind and a single sweet lollipop through the bars, but soon the light has changed and childhood has ended. Hara’s mother arrives with the black chador. “Goodbye, Hassan,” Hara says. “The shadow is gone now.” The moment is a quietly chilling one.

Meshkini pulls from the child actors a tender and affecting relationship on screen. Her camera moves with the landscape and the waves of the beach, as well as with the vibrations of the heart. In the second vignette, the camera follows Ahoo, whose energy fuels her pedaling in a bike race, which is also a race to elude a bad marriage. The women zip along like bees in wild pursuit of some indeterminate victory. There are smiles and jibes, but Ahoo also has panic in her eye. Along the way, she is confronted by her husband and teams of elders trying to persuade her to return. By the end, she is forced to dismount, but her fate is ultimately ambiguous.

The final segment is about an old woman who, upon receiving a substantial inheritance, hires a small boy to wheel her chair around a shopping mall while she makes purchases to furnish her house. She becomes a pied piper of children pushing carts filled with the commercial and superficial accoutrements of womanhood – refrigerator, stove, wedding dress, makeup. It becomes clear, however, that she has no home, and the boys set up her furnishings along the shoreline where they have a rapturously playful afternoon. Eventually, the entourage loads the old woman and her surreal dowry onto small barges and she along with all her worldly possessions float out to sea. The imagery is so illusionary that it’s not clear if her acquisitions will drown her or that she has transcended the world in every way.

The symbolic gestures that inform Meshkini’s filmmaking are breathtaking at times, and in 78 minutes, she never pulls too tersely on the underlying strings she is manipulating. While the setting is Iran and the themes are deeply ethnic, they also raise questions that are, indeed, international on some level.

A few weeks ago, the company that distributes “The Day I Became a Woman” folded. So this may well be one of the last public showings of the film.

As an introduction to the screening, MIFF organizer Ken Eisen spoke about the proliferation of filmmakers from Meshkini’s country. “Iranian film is where it’s at in the world today,” he said. A second Iranian film, which Eisen highly recommended in a discussion of highlights of the festival, is “Daughters of the Sun,” by Mariam Shariar, who will arrive at the festival on Friday and attend a reception after Saturday’s screening of her film.

The Maine International Film Festival will present a second screening of “The Day I Became a Woman,” 5 p.m. Saturday at the Railroad Square Cinema. “Daughters of the Sun” will be shown 7 p.m. Saturday at the Waterville Opera House. For information, call 873-7000 or go online at www.miff.org.