Shirin Neshat, primarily known for her video installations and photography exploring gender issues in the Islamic world, forays outside familiar territory with Women Without Men (2009), her first feature-length film. Though born in Iran, she currently resides in New York, having been banned from entering Iran since 1996 due to her politically controversial photographs and experimental videos. Overly ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful, Women Without Men was originally envisioned by Neshat as a video installation. The film was loosely adapted from feminist writer Shahrnush Parsipur’s 1989 novel of the same name. This audacious debut feature looks back at the pivotal moment in 1953 when the progressive Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown. The Shah was then re-installed as dictator in a coup d’état engineered by the American and British governments. This film, which won Neshat the Silver Lion award for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival, revolves around the lives of four women from different classes and backgrounds during this turbulent period in Iran’s history.
Representative of the expectations their society places on women, the four characters are largely cliché and their behavior often predictable. Munis (Shabnam Toloui), a serious woman obsessed with listening to the radio for reports on the Mossadegh situation and eager to participate in the street protests, refuses to limit herself to the circumscribed roles approved by her society and mandated by her tyrannical brother Amir Khan (Essa Zahir). In love with this brother who makes Munis’s life a misery, her conservative friend Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni) is a timider woman. Emaciated prostitute Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) impulsively flees the brothel where she worked after the men’s faces start to blend together into a surreal blank. Lastly, Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) is a stylish older woman unhappily married to the powerful General Sahri (Tahmoures Tehrani). After an old flame rolls into town she leaves her husband to live in a lovely country orchard where she encounters the other three women, who also arrive seeking refuge before the military coup intrudes on their peaceful idyll. Through these characters, the film celebrates women’s resilience and courage in the face of an oppressive, unyielding patriarchy that is present on personal, political and cultural levels.
While each of these women represents an aspect of what their country expects women to be, they simultaneously buck these roles, which gives them a presence greater than that of simple flesh-and-blood. Munis is desperate to take an active role in the politics of her nation, to affect change, but is forbidden by her fundamentalist brother to set foot outside the house or act other than the demure woman he expects her to be. Zarin is abused daily by men in the brothel as her only way to survive and get by, eventually leading her to flee to a women’s public bath where she scrubs herself bloody in an attempt to feel clean of their touch. Fakhri is reviled by her husband because she is menopausal and no longer sexually desirable to him; when her former lover returns she runs away with him to the orchard. These women come together in the almost magical orchard after their travails to form a family, cementing the importance of freedom and working together to attain it.
The director’s instincts as a photographer are evident in every frame of Women Without Men. The treatment of light to contrast with shadow and the expert use of color to paint each scene with rich, shifting hues creates a realistic view of the world that is still, at some level, magical. The precise compositions of each shot present alternately troubled and serene landscapes, which contribute to the almost fantastical atmosphere of the movie. In contrast to the lush color palette of the orchard scenes, the scenes taking place in Tehran (re-created in Morocco) are muted and monochromatic-more like a newsreel. Each frame in the film appears carefully composed and it gives Women Without Men the ambience of an exhibition whose figures have come to life, like Pygmalion’s Galatea, to act out this tragic feminist allegory.
It’s more than just the composition and palette of each frame that lends the film its fantastical quality—it’s the surrealistic elements as well. This is especially evident when Zarin looks up at a client’s face and sees that it is completely featureless; this initiates the breakdown that ultimately leads her to leave the brothel. The orchard is another of these surreal elements. Purchased by Fakhri it is clearly located in the real world, but its representation gives it more the feel of a dream space set apart from reality–sometimes menacing, sometimes divine.
Both the original writer and the director have been persecuted by the country of their birth because of their beliefs. Women Without Men allows viewers to feel their emotions—and through them those of the women still held down by the men in their lives—and desire to be free and true to themselves in these characters. These performances are successful largely due to the skill of their actresses in achieving the right level of emotional intensity in each scene: Shahrzad’s portrayal of her character’s dissatisfaction and desperate desire to maintain sexual and social confidence, Tóth’s display of fierce intensity, Tolouei’s depiction of pride and deep-seated melancholy.
The actresses’ portrayals are especially important given Neshat’s lack of experience with extended narrative. While her compositions are arresting, the narrative sometimes fails to pack much punch. The film feels awkward and overloaded and, despite decent performances by the actors, the viewer never gets to know their characters. Ultimately this results in the emotional impact of their respective fates falling flat and somewhat predictable. Neshat bit off more than she could chew in this ambitious debut with its heavy socio-political and cultural commentary. Nevertheless, her film is worth watching for its message, striking imagery, and distinct blend of realism and imagination in the service of an affecting feminist message.