Tonight:
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Derek Malcolm's rating
Watching Iranian women in Shirin
By
Derek Malcolm
26 Jun 2009
It is possible to read all sorts of abstruse undercurrents into Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film.
It simply shows us a bevy of Iranian women watching an epic romance, presumably in the cinema, but allows us only their reactions to the soundtrack and not the film itself.
An hour and a half of this is enough to inspire boredom rather than thought, particularly when you learn that the women, sometimes laughing, sometimes tearful and sometimes hiding their eyes, are actually actresses and that the whole thing was made in Kiarostami’s home.
Even though we know that Iran’s blue riband director has given up festival competitions and is now concentrating on experimental cinema, this attempt to stimulate our imaginations goes a bit too far.
Juliette Binoche, about to act in the next Kiarostami film (which actually has a storyline), is one of the audience but, hard as she and the others try, the film sounds much more watchable than they are.
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