Last updated on June 9, 2025
A film by Saeed Roustaee
With: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi, Hasan Pourshirazi, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee, Sahar Goldoost
Mahnaz, a 40-year-old nurse, brings up her children alone. Just as she is about to marry her boyfriend Hamid, her son Aliyar is expelled from school. When a tragic accident turns everything upside down, Mahnaz embarks on a quest for justice and reparation…
Our rate: *
Roustayi’s Woman and Child gives the director of The Law of Tehran and Leila and Her Brothers the opportunity to poke fun at Iran’s ill-conceived laws, to explore female revenge in a clumsy, even misogynistic way, to show family archaism and a variation on forced marriages (again in a misogynistic way), and to show patriarchal tendencies, he finally introduces a narcissistic pervert. From all this, he concocts a 2 hour and 10 minute film, without any major staging effects except for a window, a stairwell, and a spinning top, each with its own symbolism. In the end, we find it all very hard to believe, whether it be the archetypal or shockingly naive characters, the situations presented without subtlety, the dramatic dimension that is too quickly sidestepped, or the seriousness, sensitivity, or psychological insight. What remains is a little persistence in the way the family is run.
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