WOMEN ON
THE VERGE
by Chris Dashiell

The opening credits say "Our Song: a film by -" and then list everyone involved in the picture all at once, without distinguishing their roles. The movie has the same quality as its credits - this is a warm, generous labor of love.

Our Song follows three friends, teenage girls, during a hot summer in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Left to right: Simpson, Washington, Martinez.

Maria (Melissa Martinez) has discovered she's pregnant, but she's afraid to tell her harried single mom. Lanisha (Kerry Washington) is upset by her boyfriend's suggestion that they take "time off," while she struggles to navigate the troubled relationship between her separated parents. Fun-loving Joycelyn (Anna Simpson) dreams of being a singer or opening a boutique, as she gradually drifts away towards a more popular group of girls. All this is depicted in such a natural way, with the girls talking and acting the way real girls do, that it puts the innumerable teen-oriented Hollywood films decisively in the shade.

The picture starts a bit rough, with some of the scenes having that amateurish quality of reciting from a memorized script which can be death to a film. And to some degree, oddly enough, the scenes with adults retain a bit of this handicap throughout. But the girls seem to settle in, gaining in ease, sincerity and depth, until one forgets that they're acting and fully enters their world - a sign itself of fine acting, especially from a trio of newcomers. Martinez projects a believable mix of thoughtful reticence and melancholy. Simpson is funny and real and makes us understand her character even when we don't sympathize. The luminous Washington lets us see her character's confusion and conflicted feelings emerging through her surface calm.

The opening credits notwithstanding, the film was written and directed by Jim McKay. His first film, Girls Town, also explored female adolescence - it was interesting and well-acted, but in Our Song he has found his stride, letting this corner of the world unfold for us without the burdens of sentimentality or imposed social messages. These young women's lives are troubled, for sure, but they also dream and enjoy life and go to parties. In fact, one scene at a party, with the girls separating off and interacting with boys, evoked that time of life for me in a way that few other movies have. They are all members, as well, of a most mundane (and maligned) high school group - the marching band. Except these are the Jackie Robinson Steppers, playing themselves, so it's at a much higher level than I'm used to.

With the teen demographic dominating popular film, I see movies about teens divided into three types. The majority try to flatter the demographic by portraying teens as cool, hip, wise, funny or heroic. Others take the sensationalistic route - Larry Clark and the slasher films playing on adult fear and teen insecurity. And then there's a very small minority - of which Our Song is a shining example - that try to show it the way it is. And it's not just this that makes it refreshing, but the fact that the film takes a thoroughly female point of view. These girls are not sex objects. Martinez, for instance, would probably not land a lead role in a Hollywood film, because she's not thin. But as we get to know her character, we can see her beauty quite clearly.

And if you give Our Song a chance, you may see a bit of yourself.

The Circle opens in a hospital maternity ward. "Congratulations, it's a girl!" In the waiting room, the grandmother is dismayed. The ultrasound indicated a boy. Her son-in-law's family will be angry, perhaps ask for a divorce. The woman even checks again to make sure there was no mistake. No, it is a girl. As she leaves the hospital for her unpleasant meeting with the in-laws, she passes three women standing near a phone booth. The camera stops with these women and begins to follows them. instead. As the film goes on, it continues to break from the story we have been following, jumping to a new woman, a new story. Yet they are all the same story, a portrait - from many angles - of the oppressed condition of women in Iran.

Jafar Panahi's first picture, The White Balloon, typified the way Iranian cinema used stories about children to create beautiful works while getting around the censorship. In the wake of secularist election victories in Iran, and ongoing tension between hard-line mullahs and liberal elements in society, filmmakers have been taking more chances. Panahi's The Circle is the most explicit criticism of the system of male supremacy to come out of Iran. Its structure is simple without being simplistic, its characterizations more honest and straightforward than those of many films made in supposed democracies. The film's rigorous method is employed to make a deliberate point - and, in my view, this is justified and wholly successful.

The three women in the beginning are frightened. They're running from the authorities, and one of them gets picked up by the police right away. The remaining two - a vulnerable girl with an unexplained bruise under her eye (Nargess Mamizadeh) and her tougher, more experienced friend (Maryam Parvin Almani) scramble for bus fare to get to the former's country village. It becomes evident that they have somehow escaped from jail. We never know what their crimes were, and it is one of the film's implicit messages that it doesn't matter. Being a woman with self-will is enough of a crime.

Panahi builds tension through identification with the women's fear and confusion, and the use of suggestion and real time. When Almani's character disappears in order to get money, the camera stays with the younger woman, and we feel her wonder at what her friend is doing, even though we can make a good guess. There is a later scene when Nargess, for reasons that the film leaves for us to untangle, buys a man's shirt at the bus terminal, which in its interactions with the shopkeeper and some soldiers, combines heightened suspense about the bus she must hurry to catch with subtle implications concerning daily life for women. The picture is filled with these moments that turn the ordinary routines of life into obstacles and ordeals, reproducing for the audience the dramatic experience of the characters.

In time, this story breaks off to follow another woman (Fersehteh Sadr Orafai) who is desperately searching for a doctor to give her an abortion. Orafai gives the most fully rounded of the film's performances, displaying a weary dignity and grace under pressure that is moving. Another story has a woman abandoning her little girl on a street corner in the hopes that the public welfare system could better take care of her. Finally we meet a prostitute, hauled away by the police while the man who hired her is allowed to leave. The lowest on the social scale, her attitude of defiance is ultimately the most honest and the most free.

All of the women smoke, in a culture where women are not allowed to smoke in public. Panahi uses this as an ironic motif throughout the film. Although the women put cigarettes in their mouths at one time or another, they can never find a match, or the right place to smoke. When, near the end, the prostitute lights up in the police van taking her to jail, one can feel the momentary relief of doing something, however small and symbolic, to both lull the inner pain and express some kind of protest.

The Circle, we are told, was banned in Iran. This leaves unanswered questions in my mind. Do those who participated in this film suffer legal consequences? How is it that this banned film is exported to the world markets? It certainly puts Iranian society in a bad light, so I would expect an effort to suppress its exportation. The political situation in that country, the ongoing struggle between fundamentalism and secularism, is difficult for the outsider to accurately comprehend.

I suppose the danger for a Western audience is to safely consign the issues of The Circle to "over there," in the complacent belief that they don't apply to us. In fact the struggle continues here and everywhere, albeit in very different forms. The stories presented here can be seen as a glimpse of what's in store for us if our own brand of fundamentalists gain the upper hand. We don't have chadors, but there are other ways to hide the truth.

©2001 Chris Dashiell
CineScene