‘Woman And Child' Review: Iran's Saeed Roustaee Delivers A Fiery Feminist Portrait Of A Woman Who Refuses To Be Pushed Aside

Yahoo

22-05-2025

They say that when one door closes, another door opens. This very much applies to Iranian cinema, and the one-in, one-out approach that the country's government seems to take when imprisoning its filmmakers. Like the recently released Jafar Panahi, Woman and Child director Saeed Roustaee fell afoul of the authorities in 2023 for having the temerity to submit his last film, Leila's Brothers, to Cannes without making the necessary changes to please the Ministry of Culture. He was sentenced to nine days in jail, but his new film suggests that the experience has by no means dampened the fire in his filmmaking.
Woman and Child arrives in Cannes at the end of a very satisfying festival, and it could well be an awards contender, being a very satisfying female-fronted drama about a middle-aged widow struggling to raise two children in modern-day Tehran. That woman is Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar), who works double shifts as a nurse, and when we first meet her, she is dating ambulance driver Hamid (Payman Maadi). Mahnaz lives with her mother and her younger sister Mehri (Soha Niasti), who helps raise her two children, the angelic little Neda (Arshida Dorostkar) and her rebellious but charismatic 13-year-old big brother Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi), who makes his teachers' lives a misery.
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Hamid is pressuring Mahnaz to get married, which seems fairly reasonable since they've been dating for two years. Mahnaz, though, has hidden this fact from Neda and Aliyar, who are completely unaware that the family dynamic is about to change forever. Finally, the couple set a date for the engagement ceremony, at Mahnaz's apartment, on condition that she hide all evidence of her children from his parents and sister, who are travelling 10 hours to the big city from their village in the sticks. Mahnaz is reluctant ('They'll find out I've got two kids eventually,' she says), but Hamid gets his way, and Mahnaz packs off her offspring off to stay with her late husband's father (Hassan Pourshirazi).
The course of love, however, does not run smooth, and the 48-year-old Hamid behaves strangely at the family get-together, staring at the 25-year-old Mehri when he should only have eyes for the 40-year-old Mahnaz. Afterwards, Hamid starts to ghost Mahnaz, and, when reached by phone, his mother blurts out the awful truth, which is that Hamid is having second thoughts about Mahnaz and would rather be marrying Mehri. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when Mehri tries to play matchmaker and ends up falling in love with him, much to Mahnaz's horror.
While all this is playing out, tragedy strikes when Aliyar is fatally injured after falling from his grandfather's window. His death is the film's catalyzing incident, and Mahnaz's pent-up rage is the focus of the film's second hour as she desperately searches for some kind of justice, demanding Aliyar's school fire the teacher who suspended him (with very good reason) and trying to file an ill-founded murder charge against the grandfather. Her need for closure, meanwhile, isn't exactly helped by the fact that Mehri is now pregnant, with a boy, and plans to name him Aliyar by way of tribute.
This great big mess is what Woman and Child is all about, and although it is primarily a character study, Roustaee's film is also a caustic comment on the patriarchal nature of Iran and the strange nature of its judicial system, which favors men over women every time. The standout is Izadyar, whose big, dark eyes are the film's most valuable asset, and her mercurial shifts are a thing of wonder. But everyone in this film is great, notably Maadi, who pivots from Prince Charming to Machiavelli with breathtaking ease, and Mohebi is an exciting discovery as the raucous Aliyar: some of the best scenes in the film are his 400 Blows-style monkey shines at the local state school.
The film, though, belongs to Roustaee, who has a kinetic style we're not used to seeing from Iranian cinema; a riot of crash zooms and tracking shots that give the film a heightened and deceptively stylish verité look. He can also land the grace notes too, and the film's quietly devastating ending, in which its title is represented three times over while Hamdi looks on, powerless, is one of this year's Cannes' coups de cinema.
Title: Woman and ChildFestival: Cannes (Competition)Director-screenwriter: Saeed RoustaeeCast: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi, Soha Niasti, Sinan MohebiSales agent: GoodfellasRunning time: 2 hr 11 mins
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