Last month, I reviewed The Seed Of The Sacred Fig Tree, an Iranian film highlighting how the country’s dictatorship treats its citizens.
The authentic depiction of life in contemporary Iran resulted in writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof being sentenced to imprisonment and flogging. However, he managed to evade arrest before he was taken into custody.
It’s not only Iranian films that critically examine the government’s treatment of its citizens that put film-makers at risk.
Right now, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha are under house arrest awaiting trial for My Favourite Cake, a simple but beautifully told film about a 70-year-old widow who looks for romance in her twilight years.
It is a crazy world where film-makers face jail for telling a love story about people in their seventies, but the bravery of Iranian filmmakers, cast, and crew means stories like this will continue to be told.
Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) is a retired nurse with adult children who live abroad. Now 70, she was widowed 30 years ago but never looked for another man, choosing instead to live a life of solitude.
She and her friends stayed in for years, but as they age, it has been getting harder. Mahin has bad knees and can’t climb steps like she used to, so that rules out visiting one close friend who lives on the fourth floor. They used to meet for a weekly swim, but prices are too high now at the local pool.
Mahin hosts lunch for an annual gathering of close friends -all now in their seventies and eighties. As they discuss their aches and pains and joke about their husbands long gone, they wonder if it is too late to find new men. Most agree that they would rather not go back to cooking and cleaning for a man, but Mahin thinks it might be nice to have someone under her roof once more, so she sets out to find a single gentleman.
Her first stop is a hotel where she went in her youth, and she reminisces about Iran in the old days when women wore high heels and low necklines, and hijabs were nowhere to be seen.
When Mahin doesn’t find a potential suitor at the hotel, she goes to a pensioners’ restaurant, a staple of Iranian society where older people can get good-quality food cheaply and sometimes for free with government vouchers.
Here, she meets Faramarz (Esmail Mehrabi), a divorced taxi driver who has long given up on the prospect of finding someone new.
Mahin books him to drive her home, but once she is in his car, she makes her true intentions clear. She would like Faramarz to come inside and share a meal with her. He says yes, and they chat like giddy teenagers for the rest of the journey.
Once they arrive at the house, Mahin asks Faramarz to park a street away from her home so her noisy neighbours won’t question why an unfamiliar car is there. While he parks, Mahin rushes inside to ditch her hijab, change her clothes, and put on some makeup and perfume.
When he gets to the house, Faramarz nervously crosses the threshold and begins chatting as Mahin prepares some food. She has an illicit bottle of wine given to her before the government made alcohol illegal, and as they drink, they share stories about their lives, all the while getting closer and closer.
It has been 30 years since Mahin has been with a man, and Faramarz can’t when he last saw a woman naked, but the pair cannot wait to get into bed together, dancing and holding hands as they discuss what might happen next.
In Iran, this type of behaviour is forbidden, but in the Western world, senior love is rarely seen on screen. The idea that people in their seventies still have desires is not something we discuss as a society.
Seeing the joy that Mahin and Faramarz experience from the simple act of sharing a meal together is like watching a secret unfold. For a few short hours, they aren’t lonely older people; they are two people with a world of opportunity ahead of them.
Farhadpour and Mehrabi bring such life to Mahin and Faramarz. The tenderness they share and the sparks they experience are palpable. The ending is unexpected, but going with them on this journey feels so special.
Moghaddam and Sanaeeha are fantastic film-makers. Let us hope they get the chance to make more movies because this is filmmaking at its best.
Five stars for this beautiful, thought-provoking story.
My Favourite Cake, in cinemas, Mar 24, cert 12a, *****
