عشق در نمای نزدیک
Last weekend, I watched the short film by Iranian filmmaker Iman Behrouzi, “Love in Close-Up.” I watched it in preparation to attend the Middle East Film Festival (on Zoom) organized by the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The film is available on Vimeo, and I watched it at home on my laptop. I was completely absorbed by it, and I didn’t want it to end. I found myself left with so many questions about the form of the film. Was it a documentary? Scripted? Both? I think the answer is both, but I am honestly not too sure. The shot and frame choices Behrouzi made were very interesting, and did not have much variation, but they got a strong point across. Three separate women, who do not know each other, each in their own stages of life, all had similar heartbreaking things to say about love. And, each of them knew the Tehran story of a woman who waits on the town square street corner every day in a red dress. She waits for her love to come pick her up, and he never comes. And yet she still waits. Each of the three women in the film are vaguely aware of this story, and Behrouzi displays the effect that folklore can have on women’s expectations of love in modern-day Iran. I really enjoyed the rawness of the film, and the fact that I couldn’t tell whether or not the lines were scripted. I think I was made aware of my preconceived notion that all marriages in Iran are arranged marriages, and have nothing to do with “love” in the passionate sense of the word. Watching this film made me want to find other films like this one, both from my own American culture and from Iranian culture as well.
This is a screenshot from the beginning of the film.
ایدی
