Sadly Over-hyped

A Masterpiece!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I've read all the reviews, good and bad. Almost everything bad about this film has been mentioned. It's inauthentic, insincere, controversy-baiting, poorly written, poorly researched, etc. etc.Iran has a lot of good things and bad things, but this movie is not satisfied with either, so it invents a new country, the republic of Tehrangeles, and calls it Iran. There is almost nothing Iranian about this film. Yes, they speak Persian(ish?) but it's the equivalent of saying the movie "Rent" is representative of British culture because it's the same language. The disconnect between Iranian-Americans and Iranians is huge because Iran has gone through a revolution, war and an embargo, while the US went through many changes on its own.This film is the equivalent of a North Korean director making a film about South Korea and convincing the world that this is reality.But "wait!" you say. "Iran is the totalitarian state, not the US! Your example should be a South Korean director making a film about North Korean." But nopes. Iran has a lot of restrictions on society and filmmakers, yes, but this film constructs a fictional country.I cannot stress how bad this film is. Most of it is just shot in music video style. There is a scene where the two girls sit on top of a crossing railing, put their heads together and close their eyes. That's not something people actually do anywhere. That's music video material.So, what else do they do?1. It starts with a belly dancing scene. 2. Then there's playing piano and dancing-ish on the stool. 3. Then the girl(s) dance(s) in the taxi, saying "Turn up the volume. This song is orgasmic" - No one talks like that. It's a hip hop song. Get a grip. 4. There's the dancing on the bridge crossing. 5. There's a party and dancing at the party. 6. There's a scene, who cares what, but we go back to the party for more dancing. 7. The girl dances with her mom(?) as the mop up the floor. They stop cleaning the house and just go full dancing. 8. The family is singing on the way to the sea. 9. Dancing at a dinner table, the parents dance. 10. The girl stares out the window wistfully as she hears herself(?) sing. 11. Playing piano. 12. Singing a verse from the Quran. The word is technically recite/chant, but it's still melodic. 13. Dancing to Total Eclipse of the Heart 14. Some club, somewhere, dancing. I think this might be an imagination of life outside Iran. 15. Dancing in a hotel. Or was this the imagination? 16. Dancing in an illegal nightclub 17. Dancing in a car.This is still one hour into the film. I didn't bother keeping count after that.There are things that show how little the director knows about Iran or its culture. For example, even I know that people in mosques pray together. In sync. That's the whole point of group prayers in every culture in the world. It is to pray together. In this film the mosque scenes have people praying off sync. A group of 10+ praying men all praying on their own beat. You can say that they're praying off schedule (they missed the group prayer) and they're catching up before the next one, but as the shot lingers, it shows that they finish one after the other, every 3 seconds one finishes prayer. The first to finish and the last were about 20 seconds apart. So they were praying at the same time, same place, but some were off by a mere 3 seconds... what? No two people were praying together? Why even bother going to a mosque? It's like shooting a restaurant scene where no two people are sitting together. I'd give this film a zero, but IMDb won't let me. So it gets one star. But to be fair, it does get one star because it gives you an insight into the mind of an Iranian American. I have nothing against Iranian Americans, but a subsection of that particular demographic is as informed about Iran as the average American (so knowing little to nothing), which is fine, but a subsection of that demographic also think of themselves as an authority on the matter because of their genetics.Imagine if Katherine Heigl presented herself as an expert on East German culture, directing films about communism, the Berlin wall, the Stasi, etc. Then, instead of doing any research or going there, imagine her going to Prague to shoot the film, making a ridiculous story about graffiti on the Berlin wall, with two lesbians, one from the East one from the West, meeting at the wall. The Western one plays music through a boombox and they dance together or exchange love letters through barbed wire. And most of the film is about dancing.People would laugh at how bad it would be. Heigl wouldn't do such a thing, but this director has.This film is in my bottom 20 list, along with Foodfight! and Birdemic.

Atafeh has wealthy relatively liberal Iranian parents. She attends parties with her best friend orphan Shireen. They rebel and start a sexual affair. They join other kids to make an outlaw movie. Atafeh's older brother Mehran is a recovering drug addict. He's unemployed and finds support in a mosque. He becomes increasingly religious and installs surveillance cameras in the family home. He's obsessed with Shireen and pushes to marry her. Atafeh's father also faces religious pressure and starts to join his son.The first half isn't anything special. The lesbian affair doesn't feel real. The relationship feels manufactured. Mehran's turn is more compelling. It is sinister and scary. The last act has some good dark turns. I don't think it works completely but it has some good drama.

I cannot stress enough on this, DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM FOR HEAVENS SAKE period Even if you are one of those human right activists and the best film you watched was Titanic, DO NOT WATE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME ON IT , not even if its porn time because it doesn't even tell you anything about Iranian society. But i don't really fancy talking about the context because i believe this is why such films are made. Bunch of morons who believe they can make a good film just because it has good purpose like gender equality or rights of homosexuals.Which is wrong CINEMA IS NOT A DEVICE ,ITS ART.I wonder who paid for this film. Not only that the dialog is extremely weak, the people who read it cant even speak Farsi fluently. The story doesn't make sense and the sex scenes are unnecessary and not in harmony with the story. I don't know if the director was trying to show a love story or criticise the Iranian regime. It certainly doesn't make me feel sorry for gays in Iran (although i already do) and the only reaction i had after this film was a hard-on. Please don't watch it.Or at least ,dont pay for it.

Reading over the other reviews yielded an expected range of views. Predictably, the gay and metro-sexual crowd loves the erotic interludes, the struggle with keeping appearances against the forces of conformity and cry "artistic license" against those who correctly point out that this film is not representative of Tehran or of Iranian society and customs or even Iranian language. This reaction is to be expected as the director, more than a few times, blatantly panders to that selected audience. It felt very transparent. And that crowd has the artistic license part very wrong. The artistic license is the way the director uses the camera, light, etc. and cuts in and out of various scenes and chops things up. There was a certain style there that we can call artistic or at least "arty". But taking liberties with being accurate with subject matter that you obvious want to have taken seriously is not artistic license, it is just sloppy and it works against your purpose. That might be the main shortcoming of the film. Reviewers of Iranian descent cannot set aside the inaccuracies nor could they be expected to. There were a lot of scenes (which I won't give away) that I was not buying as realistic so how could an Iranian? At times, I felt like I was watching a propaganda film aimed at liberal westerners who are torn between not liking imperialism and US/Israeli war agendas but equally against the theocratic nature of the Iranian state. This film seems deliberately aimed at that population to slide them over to accepting military action against Iran. (yes, better to have Iran officially convert to liberalism but failing in that, OK, let a few bombs fall, that might shake things up) And how could you not want to see the destruction of the tormentors of two lovely protagonists who have been driven to drink, drugs and promiscuity by such a dysfunctional, anti-human and hypocritical state? Technically, this film has some interesting camera work. They also play around with gray scale shots a few times apparently to invoke the sense of being under surveillance or some kind of alternative reality (and later we see that some surveillance is indeed going on). Because of that, I started out liking the film a lot but it progressively lost me as time went on. The two main actresses are very effective even given some of the stranger things they were asked to do such as in the scene where they are dubbing a film. There is also some good interaction among some of the family members in the early-mid part of the film especially with Atefeh and her father. The authorities and the brother who goes to extremes come across as some surreal mix between 1984, the Matrix and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The way the brother and father change just doesn't hold water. Perhaps if some time had been spent with them to trace out how those changes took place, it might have worked but as it stands, it just serves to make the isolation of our protagonists even more extreme. Finally, what is that opening dance sequence there for?? It doesn't add a thing, in fact it detracts.