Butler's Cinema Scene

Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy in "Circumstance"

“CIRCUMSTANCE” My rating: B- (Opening Oct. 14 at the Tivoli)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Best friends Atifeh and Shireen (Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy) are like lots of other teenage girls.

They like to glam up, go to wild parties, drink, dance, rave over popular music and flirt with boys.

Problem is, Atifeh and Shireen live in Iran, where all of these activities are illegal and likely to get them arrested by the so-called morality police who enforce the mullah’s stranglehold on all aspects of society.

The gal pals engage in anti-social behavior of yet another, potentially even more disastrous form:  They are lovers.

“F***king is a human right,” says a character in writer/director Maryam Keshavarz’s politically-steeped melodrama, and that belief is the driving force behind “Circumstance,” a film set in Teheran, shot in Beirut and created under the auspices of the Sundance Institute (it won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Fest).

The shy, moneyless Shireen was raised by an uncle after her intellectual parents were “disappeared” (they wrote tracts urging a more liberal Iran). Atifeh, on the other hand, comes from a nominally religious family of wealth and privilege.

Whether the two girls are fully-committed lesbians is unclear. They obviously care deeply about each other. But their erotic attraction may also be based on the sexual repression that is everywhere in evidence. When unmarried men and women are forbidden to mingle in public, same-sex “special friendships” offer a convenient outlet.

“Circumstance’s” dramatic spine rests on the return home of Atifeh’s brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) after a stint in rehab. Lost and looking for values, this handsome young man turns to religion.

Rezo Sixo Safai

Other family members move from amusement to genuine concern over Mehran’s  conversion to highly moralistic, politically conservative beliefs…they would be even more alarmed if they realized he has (in a development that’s hard to swallow) secretly wired the household with cameras and microphones to collect evidence of anti-revolutionary behavior.

Further complicating things, Mehran is torn between his religious beliefs and his growing lust for his sister’s best friend.

“Circumstance” works best as a depiction of life in a repressive society and how individuals find ways to play the system (provocative miniskirts under form-covering outerware) and the rebelliousness that invariably springs up when society attempts to tamp down natural youthful expression.

As drama it’s a bit iffier. Boosheri and Kazemy are good actresses and astonishingly beautiful. Their sex scenes are profoundly erotic without ever slipping into bad taste.

But they’re supposed to be 16 years old, and it’s obvious that the actresses are much more mature than that, probably in their early 20s. There’s a disconnect at work: Would 16-year-olds — especially 16-year-olds raised under these circumstances — have such highly-formed senses of self?

That question gnaws away at the film’s credibility.

See “Circumstance” to get a feel for what it’s like to live in a theocracy. But take the melodrama with a grain of salt.

| Robert W. Butler