Ava

Ava has been direct­ed by Sadaf For­oughi as a musi­cal vari­a­tion on mul­ti­ple themes. We open with the min­uet third move­ment from Boccherini’s ​‘String Quin­tet in E Major’, best known for its use in clas­sic Eal­ing com­e­dy The Ladykillers. Just as Pro­fes­sor Mar­cus and co use the piece to throw Mrs Wilber­force off the scent from their crim­i­nal plot, Ava (Mahour Jab­bari) and her best friend, Melody (Shayesteh Saja­di), aren’t just meet­ing up to play music. For Ava, hang­ing out at Melody’s house is a rare escape from the repres­sion she faces from her moth­er (Bahar Noohi­an) at home and her teach­ers at school.

Singing along to the air of Boc­cheri­ni, Ava’s clas­si­cal inter­ests mask her desire to break taboos, such as by wear­ing make-up. This rebel­lious behav­iour is shot in extreme close-up, cre­at­ing an uncom­fort­able prox­im­i­ty which mir­rors the ner­vous­ness with which Ava does some­thing a West­ern audi­ence views as mun­dane. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sina Ker­man­izadeh is sim­i­lar­ly adept at film­ing inter­ac­tions from a dis­tance, bring­ing a cold­ness to typ­i­cal­ly warm domes­tic moments. The shots are exquis­ite­ly com­posed, set out with an impres­sion­is­tic qual­i­ty which gives the film a stun­ning painter­ly aesthetic.

The steril­i­ty of Ava’s home is enhanced by the film’s visu­al style: the nau­se­at­ing pale green walls are spar­ing­ly dec­o­rat­ed with mir­rors much like Jeanne Dielman’s apart­ment in Chan­tal Akerman’s 1975 film. Like Jeanne, we watch the rou­tines of Ava’s moth­er and wit­ness a sense of regret sim­mer under her hard exte­ri­or, despite hav­ing a career as a psy­chi­a­trist – she claims to have pur­sued what was best for her fam­i­ly rather than her ado­les­cent pas­sions. The cam­era enhances the oppres­sion of women, film­ing only their reflec­tions in soft focus or frag­ments of their bod­ies blocked by. With the tick­ing of Ava’s metronome, we sense for her that sim­mer will even­tu­al­ly rise to a boil.

While Ava’s moth­er push­es her daugh­ter toward anoth­er career, per­haps due to music’s friv­o­lous asso­ci­a­tions, her father (Vahid Aghapoor) is more sym­pa­thet­ic to her pas­sion for the vio­lin. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sug­ges­tive fram­ing through win­dows with char­ac­ters out of shot or behind the cam­era pre­vents the audi­ence from being able to appre­ci­ate the sub­tle­ty of the per­for­mances. Some­times the scale of Ava feels unsta­ble, tee­ter­ing between sweep­ing state­ments on the role of women in Iran and the micro­cos­mic Tehran-based fam­i­ly dra­ma of the script.

It’s pos­si­ble to do both, and it’s in the more sub­dued moments of Ava that we feel the full force of Foroughi’s frus­tra­tion. It’s beau­ti­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the cast, espe­cial­ly Jab­bari whose tit­u­lar char­ac­ter seems to be dis­cussed by oth­ers more than she speaks for her­self. We rely on Jabbari’s expres­sion to know her feel­ings, sto­ic until she demon­stra­bly isn’t, and those rare cracks are the rup­tures which give the film its impe­tus. They give hope that a woman’s move­ment could rise up at any minute, whilst bit­ter­ly acknowl­edg­ing the majority’s acqui­es­cence to patriarchy.