Following Jafar Panahi’s Palme d'Or winner It Was Just An Accident, Woman and Child was the second Iranian film to play in this year’s Cannes Film Festival main competition – and deserves to garner as much attention.
Directed by Saeed Roustaee, it’s another forceful work to come out of Iranian cinema at a time when filmmakers are under constant pressure in their homeland. In the case of Roustaee, he was given a suspended six months prison sentence for submitting his 2022 work Leila’s Brothers to Cannes without making the necessary changes to appease the Ministry of Culture.
His new film, Woman and Child, comes with an in-baked anger against the Iranian authorities. On the surface, it’s a portrait of a single mother-of-two, living in modern-day Tehran. Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar) is an overworked nurse who’s life is all harassment and little pleasure. She lives with her mother and younger sister Mehri (Soha Niasti), who lends a hand raising her two kids, the adorable Neda (Arshida Dorostkar) and the mischievous 14-year-old, Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi).
Even Mahnaz’s romantic life is anything but easy. After her husband passed away, she has been dating Hamid (Payman Maadi), an ambulance driver at the hospital where she works. He wants her to marry, given they have been together for two years, but she is refusing his proposals. Worse is to come, given Aliyar’s behaviour at school. “Your son is a monster” she is told, and he’s certainly out of control, whether he’s bullying other kids or posting videos of his frazzled teachers online.
At one point, he idly breaks off a matchstick in the slot of a padlock, which chains the school gates, moments before crowds of children swarm to leave for the day. It leads to utter chaos, beautifully captured by Roustaee, who truly shows his cinematic eye throughout this film. Another striking moment comes as Aliyar runs down the stairs of his apartment block, the camera glancing down to show the cavernous interior, with its checkered floor, to some degree foreshadowing the fatal events to come.
Woman and Child hinges on a midpoint narrative moment, a tragic event that changes everything, when Aliyar dies after falling from a window. At this point, he’s being looked after by his grandfather (Hassan Pourshirazi), while Mahnaz is elsewhere, dealing with her potential future in-laws. Was it the grandfather’s fault? The second hour of Woman and Child spirals as Mahnaz begins pursuing a legal case against her former father-in-law, as she plunges into Iran’s byzantine legal system.
You might call Woman and Child a melodrama, although the drama itself feels very real. While it’s not as gripping as A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s award-winning tale about a couple undergoing divorce in modern-day Iran, it still engages with the complexities of Iranian law, and moral questions of guilt and responsibility. But as the title suggests, Roustaee’s film is very much about the female experience, and the bond of a mother with her offspring.
Arguably it’s this that feels radical, a film that gives us the perspective of a modern-day Iranian woman navigating a patriarchal society. And this portrait of an independent woman, living, surviving and eventually grieving in today’s Tehran, shows plenty of rebellious spirit. An important social work, this Palm D'Or winner would have been just as deserving of Cannes's top prize.
