The
world gets another opportunity to see how women are treated
in a strict Moslem country in Hemlock (Shokaran),
directed by Behrooz Afkhami. The country is Iran. Women had
some freedoms before the revolution of 1979, when Ayatollah
rule began, so the film is yet another example of the recent
pressure for liberalization. Afkhami, in fact, has been elected
to the parliament. The story is rather simple. Mahmoud Bassirat
(played by Fariborz Arab-Nia) is a wealthy business executive
who becomes the CEO when his boss relinquishes control after
being hospitalized due to a mysterious accident. During visits
to his boss at the hospital, Bassirat meets a nurse, Miss
Riahi (played by Hedieh Tehrani), and the two have an affair.
She lives with her father and is eager for marriage. Bassirat
ultimately decides to end the affair, but she is pregnant
and wants to be a mother. Miss Riahi then presses Bassirat
to divorce and marry her, but he does not want a scandal.
Bassirat repeatedly tries to get her to stop contacting him,
offering to pay the fine if she will obtain an abortion, but
she persists. Bassirat then visits her father at home, thus
implying that an affair has been going on. When the Miss Riahi
returns home, her father refuses to allow her to enter the
home, as he wants no part of the scandal. Homeless, she buys
a liter of gas, goes to Bassirat’s home to place the gas container
in his room, and then drives onto the highway so that she
will be involved in a fatal accident. Bassirat, who has taken
his wife to dinner to celebrate becoming CEO, stops on the
road to look at the accident and learns that his erstwhile
lover is the victim. Clearly, Afkhami is asking fellow Iranians
to be more humane in treating women, a theme also stressed
in the Iranian film The Girl in the Sneakers
(2000). MH
I
want to comment on this film
