Tehran Taboo

As its title sug­gests, Ali Soozandeh’s Tehran Taboo explores var­i­ous issues in mod­ern-day Iran­ian soci­ety – issues that are myr­i­ad, com­plex and not com­mon­ly dis­cussed with­in the coun­try. Specif­i­cal­ly, the film looks at the sex­u­al restric­tions placed upon those liv­ing in the epony­mous cap­i­tal city, espe­cial­ly those which apply first and fore­most to women.

Hav­ing left his home­land for Ger­many 23 years ago, Soozan­deh is one of the few Iran­ian film­mak­ers work­ing today with a decent mea­sure of cre­ative free­dom, oper­at­ing as he does out­side of the strict cen­sor­ship laws imposed by the state. Soozan­deh, who pre­vi­ous­ly made his name as an ani­ma­tor on Ali Sama­di Ahadi’s 2010 doc­u­men­tary The Green Wave, about Iran’s so-called ​‘Green Rev­o­lu­tion’, cer­tain­ly makes the most of this oppor­tu­ni­ty, cre­at­ing an eye-open­ing and often har­row­ing depic­tion of mid­dle class life in the city.

The film prin­ci­pal­ly fol­lows the lives of four peo­ple: Pari (Elmi­ra Rafizadeh), a moth­er forced into pros­ti­tu­tion; Sara (Zahra Amir Ebrahi­mi), her preg­nant neigh­bour; and Babak and Donya (Arash Maran­di and Negar Mona Alizadeh), a young cou­ple who are shown hav­ing sex at a night­club. The respec­tive arcs of these char­ac­ters become inter­twined over the course of the film’s 90-minute run time, as each encoun­ters dif­fer­ent chal­lenges aris­ing from the repres­sive soci­ety in which they live.

Tehran Taboo was made using roto­scop­ing, a tech­nique com­bin­ing ani­ma­tion and live action where motion cap­ture footage is shot and then traced over to cre­ate an ani­mat­ed effect. This proved to be an inspired deci­sion. Of course, it does mean that some of the real­ism is lost, but this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing. Instead of expos­ing view­ers to an unfil­tered view of what is an inescapably bleak social envi­ron­ment, Soozan­deh depicts the com­plex real-world issues fac­ing the res­i­dents of Iran’s cap­i­tal city with strik­ing and vibrant imagery. A stun­ning colour palette, cou­pled with peo­ple and places that feel noth­ing if not authen­tic, makes for an effec­tive blend of fan­ta­sy and reality.

The open­ing scene, in which Pari is shown per­form­ing sex­u­al acts on a taxi dri­ver while her mute son sits in the back seat, is par­tic­u­lar­ly arrest­ing. But thanks large­ly to a strong script that serves up a com­pelling nar­ra­tive and empa­thet­ic char­ac­ters, the film man­ages to avoid exces­sive polit­i­cal hand-wring­ing. Its mes­sage is clear, yet for every shock­ing scene of a pros­ti­tute work­ing in front of her child or a cat being clubbed to death in the street, Soozan­deh shows us chil­dren play­ing, moth­ers laugh­ing and oth­er images of every­day human compassion.

That being said, Tehran Taboo occa­sion­al­ly feels a lit­tle con­trived in the way it com­mu­ni­cates var­i­ous social issues. While these mes­sages often fit seam­less­ly into the plot, there are times when Soozan­deh takes us out of the sto­ry momen­tar­i­ly. Nev­er­the­less, in a film that is clear­ly striv­ing to make an impact in Iran, plac­ing greater empha­sise on the social com­men­tary aspect of the sto­ry is per­haps a nec­es­sary means to an end