Circumstance. Directed by Maryam Keshavarz. Starring Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy. In Farsi with English subtitles.
Rating: 9 (out of 10)
Director Maryam Keshavarz's new film Circumstance will mean different things to different people.
Some press coverage has focused on the sexual relationship between two teenage girls, played by Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy, and prefaced articles with sensationalistic headlines like "Lesbian Love" and "Lesbian teenagers romp in Circumstance." The tabloid treatment may help get more hits on websites but completely misses the point of the story and obscures the context of the film made by a Western director of Iranian descent about contemporary life in Tehran.
The girls' taboo relationship is part and parcel of larger issues that confront Iranians on a daily basis living in a conservative, paternalistic society. Structurally the film is reminiscent of Nicholas Ray's classic take on authority in Rebel Without A Cause. Like the 1950's American film, Circumstance, is essentially a family drama about upper middle-class suburban youth looking for ways to break out of their oppressive surroundings. People are forced to take sides as the status quo becomes intolerable and unacceptable.
Working under contract in the Hollywood studio system, Ray had actors such as James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo at his disposal. Keshavarz developed her script at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and searched worldwide for actors from the Iranian diaspora to make Circumstance.
For Vancouver's Nikohl Boosheri working on the film has been a life-changing experience.
"I think the story is kind of universal," says Boosheri. "Anyone who's grown up in a repressive environment or repressive home can relate to the story but I think audiences are shocked by some things in the film that for an Iranian are just very obvious. At screenings audiences are asking questions about the restrictions placed on women and just young people in general who live in Iran. They are very surprised there is a morality police but, yeah, that's the reality they are living with every day.
"The heart of the film is about a family. People like to make it a story about the girls but I think that's a small piece of what's happening and the bigger picture is about a family that's struggling to stay together in hard times, under siege. It's about young people in Iran. They seem to have the same opportunities and they seem to be going in the same direction but that direction is deviated when their circumstances change for each of them."
Born in Pakistan to Iranian parents who were in the process of moving to Canada, Boosheri, 23, grew up in the Lower Mainland. Coquitlam's Gleneagle secondary is where she caught the acting bug although it took awhile for her to warm up to the idea she says. "When I was very young someone recommended that my mom take me to acting and modelling classes and I would just kick and scream. I did not want to go, I did not want to leave the house, I did not want to get up in the morning. It was a huge challenge just to get me out the door to go to these things.
"But in Grade 9 I took theatre and the first day of school the teacher hands us a script. We went straight to work. The teacher, Richard Dixon, was also a writer so he would write the plays. You would get a script, rehearse for three weeks, perform for a week and then he would write another one specifically for you with your weaknesses and your strengths and where he thought you needed to go next as a student. By the time I left high school I had done 26 plays."
Boosheri built on that experience and studied for six months with Linda Darlow at Vancouver's School Creative but still had no professional film experience when Keshavarz was casting Circumstance. "I was doing a play in the city called Dog Sees God at the Havana and an agent saw me in the play," says Boosheri.
"We sent a tape off to Circumstance. I don't know if it was luck or timing. It was an unknown territory for me."
The young actress was hired in December 2008 to play 16year-old Atafeh and even though they didn't start filming until almost a year later Boosheri was kept busy researching her role and learning to speak like a Tehran teen. She spoke fluent Farsi but with a Canadian accent. "I have a lot of my family here and some like my grandmother never learned to speak English. Farsi is the only way I can communicate with them. I was fluent in the language but it was quite choppy. It wasn't my first language and I spoke it with a very thick accent.
"I worked with a dialect coach for 10 months prior to shooting. Our coach was also on our set so she was sitting there with headphones and very quick to run up to us and have us repeat something. Authenticity was very important to Maryam so it was crucial that we got the accents right of the youth in modern-day Tehran. It's a new generation. They have their own way of speaking, their own rhythm, their own nuances, their own language almost. I've been taught by my family but they left 23 years ago and the language has been frozen in time so there was lots of work to be done."
Because of its sensitive subject matter Circumstance had no chance of being filmed inside Iran. Keshavarz submitted a generic script with no sex, drugs or rock'n'roll to get approval from the powers that be to make the film in Beirut, Lebanon which would stand in for Tehran. The production went ahead in November 2009 filming 24 days over a two-month period under clandestine conditions hiding the true nature of their film from authorities.
"There are just so many different layers to who's in control," says Boosheri. "There's the police, there's the military, there's the Christians, there's the Muslims, there's Hezbollah. We had a handful of visits on set and you really don't know who's there right? We were always very cautious. We were working with this fear because we could not afford to have the film confiscated. We just had to take every precaution that we could to be safe and get the film done. All the intimate scenes were on closed sets but one day we did have a visit while we were shooting a very intimate scene and you know in those moments you just improvise. The false script that we had submitted had nothing to do with Iran, was not in Farsi and had nothing to do with sex or drugs or politics. It was just 'Quick, quick, no Farsi, no Farsi, English only.'"
Filming in the bustling urban centre of Beirut was an eyeopener for Boosheri, who's more accustomed to the laidback style of Canada's West Coast. "I could go on and on about Beirut," she says. "It was fantastic, magical and very difficult. You know we were working under such time constraints. In Beirut they do have a film infrastructure but they mostly do music videos and commercials. They don't work the way North Americans do but we had the most wonderful Lebanese crew that wanted to get the film made as much as we did. It was just as much of a challenge for everyone because you know you'd show up on set one day and find out your location's gone even though it's been scouted for two months."
In one scene, after a night of heavy partying Tehran-style, Atafeh is driven home from the police station by her father (played by the superb Toronto-based actor Soheil Parsa) and they get stuck in traffic. The production crew didn't have to set anything up for that shot. "There's always traffic in Beirut," laughs Boosheri. "I don't know why these people drive.
Apparently the average is two cars per family which just makes no sense because everything is so close and cabs are so cheap and convenient."
The footage was smuggled out of Lebanon via Jordan and processed in the U.S. The finished work won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and ever since then Boosheri has been touring Circumstance around the film festival circuit with Keshavarz and the rest of the cast. "We've been all around the world," she says. "It's been so fantastic. I've never been outside of North America so I feel like I've been able to see the world with this film and travel with the cast and crew which I love. We're all so close. We all keep in touch and many of us speak every day. We've kind of forged these lifelong relationships.
The audiences are amazing. I think that's my favourite part of travelling with the film is having the audiences come up and talk to us and share their own stories. In Sundance I had a southern lady come up to me in the bathroom after one of our screenings with tears in her eyes and she said, 'I'm torn because the film goes against everything I believe morally and I have children and I don't know if I would let them watch this but I voted for your film. I thought I had to. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't I feel for some reason people need to watch this.' She was struggling through it. It's just amazing how it affects people and touches people and maybe in a way that it didn't affect me. Everyone has a different way into the film."
Boosheri is the only member of the cast who has never set foot in Iran. Some were born in Iran, others like Keshavarz and Kazemy used to visit relatives in the summer but after making the film no one expects to be able to go back for a long time. "We were made aware that by doing this film we were taking a huge risk," says Boosheri. "Doing Circumstance I feel very connected to my roots now so more than ever I have a desire to go back and to experience Iran for myself. I am hopeful but change takes time. Even if there's a revolution tomorrow I'm not going next year, you know what I mean, so I think it's important just to be patient and wait."
