‘Woman And Child’ review: Saeed Roustaee drama heaps misfortune on an Iranian widow

Dir. Saeed Roustaee. Iran/France 2025. 131mins

The ‘raining stones’ precept of piling up disaster after disaster has at all times been a fundamental of social realism however requires dealing with with the utmost care, lest it tip over into the realm of melodrama or cleaning soap opera. These are two areas perilously skirted by Iranian function Lady And Little one. One other Cannes Competitors entry from author/director Saeed Roustaee following his 2022 contender Leila’s Brothers, it is a movie through which the percentages are stacked towards ladies by establishments and an uncaring patriarchy, and through which ladies should be taught to face collectively or fall. However the polemical dimension is hamstrung by an ever-mounting chain of ‘now what?’ revelations and abrupt raisings of the ante, leaving it to a robust solid to maintain the drama afloat – notably lead actor Parinaz Izadyar.

Subsides into piled-up shocks and reversals

Izadyar – beforehand seen in Roustaee’s Life And A Day and Simply 6.5 – performs Mahnaz, a widowed 45-year-old hospital nurse who’s mom to 2 youngsters, eight-year-old daughter Neda (a full of life Arshida Dorostkar) and wayward teenage son Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi). She can also be on the verge of remarriage to ambulance driver Hamid (Payman Maadi), who appears genuinely smitten together with her however whose smoothie flirtatiousness constitutes an early pink flag.

Aliyar is Mahnaz’s principal headache – a pure troublemaker, whose precociousness is signalled by his overtly cheeky amorous method to his mom’s work colleague. Aliyar’s charismatic mischief at college lands him in hassle with trainer Samkhanian (Maziar Seyedi), whose endurance lastly runs out when the boy is discovered operating a classroom playing ring. It entails little extra scandalous than betting on a spinning high – Roustaee makes the symbolic most of its vertiginous spirals, shot from above – however it results in the boy’s expulsion, which then seems like a attainable contributory issue to the movie’s central tragedy. If this weren’t sufficient, Roustaee performs an outright telenovela card, with Hamid turning his attentions to Mahnaz’s youthful sister Mehri (Soha Niasti).

By this level, the rising focus could be very a lot the rift in Mahnaz’s household, and the methods through which the callous or underhand behaviour of males undermines feminine solidarity – represented firstly by an idyllic residence education session through which Mahnaz and Mehri impart information to the youngsters, with their mom (Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee) additionally furthering her personal schooling. However the shocks and confrontations all through are performed very broadly, with Izadyar required to worldessly register numerous shades of horror, upset and fury, or let rip with impassioned lamentations and recriminations. Mahnaz additionally turns into an avenging fury when she units out to actual authorized redress following the tragedy.

The descent into hyperventilating bathos is all of the extra disappointing as a result of the movie’s first third is so robust, notably in a sequence displaying Aliyar at college, particularly in its industrial workshop – an prolonged sequence staged with grit and element and crackling with power, not least in some extremely cellular images. This vividly-delineated milieu brings to thoughts Truffaut’s 400 Blows, with Aliyar (ebulliently performed by Mohebi) paying homage to that movie’s irrepressible Antoine Doinel.

Quickly after that, nevertheless, the movie subsides into piled-up shocks and reversals, leaving the actors to bolster the drama with emoting – not at all times in essentially the most refined of the way.  Maadi (from Leila’s Brothers and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) makes essentially the most of a sneering bad-egg position by laying on the silky serpentine notes, whereas Seyedi’s blustering, perpetually aggrieved trainer milks boisterous comedian worth from an embodiment of abusive authority. And Izadyar is, throughout the restricted parameters the position permits her, compelling whilst a schematic icon of feminine struggling and endurance.