Anticipation.
Always seated for Iranian cinema and cake.
Enjoyment.
A portrait of geriatric loneliness led by magnetic performance.
In Retrospect.
These ephemeral love stories should be told outside of Before Sunrise.
Living a rock-and-roll lifestyle, sleeping in ’til noon, starting the day with black tea and cigarettes, smearing on make-up with her fingers, Marin (Lili Farhadpour) could be mistaken for a woman half her age. But at 70 years old, she’s coming to terms with a body that is not as young as it once was, and a country that is not as free as it used to be. Her husband has been dead for decades, her children have moved away, and her once-raucous friends now only meet up once a year, and give her a blood pressure monitor as an early birthday present.
Stubbornly taking herself on a solo girl’s day out, she discovers beyond her beautiful but remote home lies a country she barely recognises, a disconnect that is both entertaining and devastating. She reminisces in a hotel where she and her friends used to go dancing, only to find an empty coffee shop (said in jarring English within the Farsi dialogue) where the waiter offers her an unpronounceable cofee she has never heard of, and then asks her to scan a QR code to access the menu.
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While this Americanisation and use of technology seems like a turning point of modernity, Marin’s youthful liberalism is a relic, as she later rescues a girl about to be arrested by the Morality Police for showing too much hair. Iran is no longer a place for spontaneous romance, but when Marin comes across an elderly taxi driver (Esmael Mehrabi) and overhears he is a bachelor, she puts herself out there and invites him home.
What ensues is a quietly radical date, behind closed doors and away from prying neighbours. As Marin and her new beau Faramarz court awkwardly, they open up about their lives, talking of lost love and of a country that isn’t kind to their desire for irreligious joy. They enjoy dolma and get tipsy in a secret garden shaded by cedars that Marin stole as seedlings from the park 30 years ago. Settling into domestic comfort, as Faramarz fixes her outdoor lights, Marin makes the titular cake (orange blossom and vanilla crème) excited at the prospect of someone to share it with.
The starring actors play off one another beautifully, clumsy but earnest beyond their years and the camerawork reflects this newfound intimacy, weaving between them as they dance like nobody’s watching, while the editing maintains the levity with a particularly incredible crash cut.
My Favourite Cake is a slice-of-life film with considered dialogue and heartfelt performances that unravels a culturally specific repression, one that got the Iranian filmmakers banned from France and Germany to edit and promote this film, but also the more universal loneliness of the elderly who still have more life to live.
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