Seventy year old Mahin is the loneliest widow you ever saw. Her army man husband has been dead thirty years. Her grown-up daughter has left Iran, and made a life elsewhere. But as she tells the man she picks up– yes, that’s what she does– as step one of the most unusual yet spirited seduction that I’ve seen on screen, Tehran is her home. Why should she leave? He is a taxi driver, and also lives alone, and most of the film focusses on these two elderly people, trying to make a connection in a country drowning under draconian gender rules.
The directors of ‘Keyke Mahboobe Man’ (My Favourite Cake), Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, were refused permission to travel for the world premier of their film at the 74th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. It’s one of the first Iranian films that shows women in their home without a hijab, and the filmmakers said they are aware that there can be grave consequences of their choice. But the sight of Mahin, literally letting her hair down in the company of a male stranger, puts a smile on your face: this is a film whose beats are predictable, but also joyful, and moving.
The two empty chairs at the press conference after the screening was an eloquent statement against the continued restrictions against filmmakers in one of the most repressive regimes in the world. In a statement read out by the lead actress Lily Farhadpour, who infuses her old lady character with a remarkably youthful zest, the duo mourned the complicated rules under which they have to operate when they attempt to showcase the reality of their lives.
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This year’s competition section at Berlinale, under directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, is a mix of arthouse and more accessible cinema, which is being seen as a sign of the times, and something of a rising feature in even the most rigorous film festivals around the world. ‘My Favourite Cake’, a warm, funny film about loneliness and repression, manages to hit the sweet spot between the personal and political: a late-morning walk in the neighbouring park leads to an encounter with the morality police out scouring for women they can corral, and only her intervention saves a young girl, whose hair is visible under her not-so-tightly worn scarf, from being carted off to the cop station.
The young girl is here to meet her boy-friend. She knows what it is like to be targetted. Once before, when the cops showed up, the twosome had saved themselves by claiming they were siblings. It’s not just the seventeen year olds who have to be careful about who they are seen with. Seventy-year-olds like Mahin, and the taxi-driver, both consenting adults, have to hide from a nosy neighbour when she comes enquiring about hearing ‘a man’s voice’ in the house.
As the unexpected encounter between these two progresses, the film also makes a powerful statement about the importance of intimacy, and humanity. If only it were as simple as tossing up a favourite piece of confectionary.
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