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Customer Reviews of The Day I Became a Woman

A Universal Work
This wonderful film by an Iranian woman is not "just for women" It is tug-o-war between indomitable human spirit & cultural or personal boundaries from which none of us is free. There are 3 related stories: (1)A girl's last day as a child to play with a (boy)friend of her choice & to live in the moment (2)A womens bicycle race where they seek both pride & escape (to their men this amounts to theft) (3)An old lady who inherits money runs out and buys things, however now she has no one. All these stories blessed by the gorgeous Persian Gulf seacoast.

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A Beautiful Film with Immediate Messages on Women
Since the 1990s, we have been given more oppotunities to watch Iranian films, and another masterpiece came here. This time, however, the film handles with a more immediate issue in Iran with a very subtle touch (and you may remember that the director Marzieh Meshkini is the wife to the acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Kandahar" and "The Cyclist").

"The Day I Became a Woman" consists of three short stories that cover three generations of women. Each part is, as always with Iranian films, based on allegorical meanings, so if you're used to the idea of traditional storytelling, you must stop using that concept for a while. But don't worry, because her method here is more accesible to aundience outside Iran than other works made there. Just try to find what the film really wants to say.

The first story follows a girl who meets her 9 year-old birthday. That means, in the traditional view, that she becomes a grown-up woman, and henceforth she belongs to domestic sphere her mother and grandmother are in. No longer she is allowed to play with boys, but the girl contends that as she was born at noon she still has time, and she is finally given short time to meet her best friend (a boy), who is ironically grounded in his room to do his homework. The way she spends the last moment of her childhood is depicted with slow but poetic images.

The second follows a married woman who takes part in a bicycle race. But her husband threatens her to stop, then her family, the village's chief, and so on. But in spite of these interruption, she keeps on going, never thinking of stopping for them, even facing her divorce. From what she rides, or runs? To where she runs? These questions are never directly replied, but instead, with a dynanic images of rushing bicycles (all driven women) the film keeps on running breathless, leading us to its shattering ending.

The third one, most humorous and poignant, portrays an old lady, who comes to a shopping center to buy things for her house. As she has inherited money, she can buy anything she wants -- a fridge, clearner, television, tea-pot, you name it. One irony is that she cannot remember one thing that she really wanted, and that is the crucial point of the film. Spreading all she bought on the beach, she tried to remember in vain while the children play with them. The answer is again indirectly shown, implied by the past her story suggests, but I should not reveal that part. Find it for yourself.

Shot with lyricism, and infused with urgent messages about today's women's status in Iran (and probably anywhere else), "The Day I Became a Woman," short as it is, offers more chance than any other film these days, to think about those issues we all should be conscious of. But before that, let me say the film is a great success with its poetic visuals with simple fable-like quality. Shot in Kish Island on the Pertian Gulf, this film is a must for any film buff with a discerning eye. And it shows a glimpse of life on this beautiful island, a famous resort place, where, perhaps to your surprise, you will encounter unexpectedly a huge shopping center that looks like those you see in LA, Tokyo and London.

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Tapestry of female experience in modern Iran.
Marzieh Meshkini's triptych charts the three ages of woman - girl, adult, crone - to reveal the limitations on female experience in Iran, past, present and possibly future.

The film opens with a bright blue sea, partly blocked by a black scarf being used as a sail on a makeshift boat. This image crystallises the film's theme - the wide horizons offered by the world limited by the socially-controlled fact of being a woman. Clothes are crucial - this scarf, an emblem of oppression for women, becomes a practical item that confirms freedom for the boys. The heroine of the first story wears her hair free and a loose summery dress; she is used to playing the beach with boys. Today is her ninth birthday, the day she becomes a woman - this means donning the heavy black chador like her mother and grandmother, effacing herself and staying at home, whose doors, walls and windows are a heavy presence. Arguing that she's still a child because she was born at noon, she manages to wangle one last free hour, to be marked by the stick she carries, whose shadow will indicate the time. Hence a social injustice is justified by reference to nature and the land. Our knowledge of her life closing up gives this final hour a desperate urgency, but the director imposes no heavy portentousness, revealing instead the youth, spontaneity, openness, wit and charm to be soon lost. The most painful (to us), charged and delightful sequence sees her sharing candy through a barred window with her best friend, an impish youth in American gear who has been grounded to do his homework. The fact that this scenario will soon be irreversibly reversed makes the charm almost obscene.

The second story seems to continue the surreal strain of the director's daughter, Samira Makhmalbaf's 'Blackboards', as a man galloping urgently on a strong horse shouting 'Aloo', is shot in speedy tracks. He comes across an endless line of scarved female cyclists, whose presence is only explained in the third part, and so whose inexplicability increses the tension. He picks out one woman, Aloo, and demands she returns home. Despite the snickers of her compadres, she refuses. Her husband returns with a Mullah and threatens divorce - she retorts, go ahead. Her father and tribal elders, then her thuggish brothers, all emanate from nowhere and inexorably demand she return to being a submissive woman. The psychological agony that sears the protagonist is only fitfully shown in her face, but is revealed in a series of dislocated, hallucinatory landscapes, in which the soundtrack moans. The clash between modernity and tradition suggested in the bicycles and horses paralells the strong visual presence of the environment, the aridity of the desert plains, and the potential refreshment and rebirth of the clear, beating sea.

After the unnerving shock of the central story, the finale seems to offer comic relief, and almost threatens to sink into cutesy magic realism. For the first time we seem modern, cosmopolitan Iran, as a group of young boys with trolleys wait at the airport for incoming passengers. One carries an old lady of just-inherited wealth, who begins shopping in the spanking malls, because she has never had anything in her life. With her retinue strung behind her, huge cardboard boxes on trolleys, this old woman on wheels is like a reverse, comic image of the fugitive in the second story. Waiting for the ship to carry her cargo, she lays out her purchases on a gleaming beach, in effect constructing a house without walls, like some kind of Surrealist travel brochure. When she returns into town to replace a teapot she dislikes, her servants take over, boys indulging the freedom to play and experiment with identity denied the film's women, all of whom return in this closing story, either by presence or allusion.

A defiant, provocative political plea, 'The Day I Became A Woman' is more accessible than the films of Kiarostami or Samira Makhmalbaf, as it leavens the formal and ideological rigour with the pleasures of colour, action and humour.