Director – Sadaf Foroughi – 2017 – Iran – 102m
** 1/2
Available on VoD from Friday, August 21st
Ava (Mahour Jabbari) is a schoolgirl studying music – against the wishes of her parents, particularly her straight-laced and conservative mother Bahar (Bahar Noohian) who thinks music isn’t a real job and her daughter should consider a career that pays. Bahar is a hospital doctor and her husband Vahid (Vahid Aghapoor) is a freelance architect.
By way of a prank, Ava makes a bet with her friends and classmates Melody (Shayesteh Sajadi) and Shirin (Sarah Alimoradi) that she can get a date with Nima (Houman Hoursan) who is currently dating another classmate Yasi (Mona Ghiasi). Her mother hates the fact that Ava and Melody are best friends and spend a lot of time together, not least because Melody’s mum is a single parent.
Meanwhile, Bahar recounts a difficult hospital shift where a girl was found screaming wandering at night although she can’t bring herself to use words as explicit as “pregnancy” or “abortion”. This recent experience is in the back of her mind when she discovers one Saturday that Ava is not round at Melody’s but somewhere else. (Ava is spending time with Nima and misses the bus to get back.) Ava’s planned alibi of visiting Shirin has fallen through because the latter’s family are always away at weekends. Bahar gets into a furious row with Melody’s considerably less conservative mum.
Bahar then drags Ava to see a gynaecologist who confirms Ava’s protestations that nothing untoward has taken place. Bahar goes on to complain to school principal Ms. Dehkhoda (Leili Rashidi) who as a result subjects Ava to bag searches and her class to a disciplinarian speech about “those who can’t control their animalistic desires”. All this turns Ava from a submissive, model student into a rebel. Later she self-harms in class by sticking a pair of scissors in her hand and is passed over in favour of lesser players for an upcoming music recital.
Looking at some old photographs her aunt has, Ava makes the discovery that her dad married her mum after he got her pregnant. She, her parents and the school principal are now on a collision course…
After two recent films (Papicha and Young Ahmed) dealing far more effectively with the problems of conservative Islamic traditions in Algeria and Belgium, this one set in Iran feels distinctly like an also-ran.
The first half hour of the film feels painfully slow, possibly because many shots are held too long with no discernible benefit. The flow feels stretched and could no doubt have been greatly improved by more work in the cutting room.
Beyond the first couple of reels, however, Ava improves to deliver its picture of an innocent scapegoated by a repressive Muslim regime. By the time the film has finished, it’s hard not to feel considerable sympathy for the heroine with her monster of a mother who manipulates the school principal and ruins her daughter’s life.
Ava is out on VoD in the UK from Friday, August 21st.
Trailer: