Circumstance

Directed by Maryam Keshavarz

***

Iranian-American director Maryam Keshavarz is “clearly willing to take risks,” said Gary Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times. Her feature debut—which follows two beautiful Iranian teenagers who are attracted both to each other and to a life of such forbidden pleasures as alcohol and underground dance clubs—plays as a “taboo-busting snapshot of contemporary Tehran.” It’s part “provocative psychodrama” and part “Iranian Girls Gone Wild.” Though Circumstance eventually tips into melodrama, it’s “best during its simpler, more naturalistic moments,” said Mark Jenkins in NPR.org. In one poignant scene, stars Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy appear on a beach “covered head to foot in hijabs,” only to strip to their underwear for a prohibited swim after the call to prayer clears the shore of men. When an older brother emerges as “the serpent” in the girls’ “garden of delights,” his treachery becomes a bit much, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. But “if excess and unruliness can be counted among the film’s flaws,” that’s okay: “They also represent the very principles it is determined to defend.”

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