If it’s everyone’s desire to be ‘free as air’, what happens when the atmosphere is not fit to be breathed? INVERSION, Behnam Behazadi’s subtly powerful Iranian drama, ponders the nature of freedom in a closed society: one that is being choked in more ways than one. The movie is set in modern Teheran, a vast city oppressed not only by its Revolutionary Guards (unseen in this determinedly domestic panorama) but also by a suffocating, visceral atmosphere heavily polluted by the locust-swarm of cars that clog its pulmonary arteries.
Niloofar, the owner of a small tailoring business, is the focal point of the film. The air in her city has become toxic, especially for her mother Mahin (Shirin Yazdanbakhsh) who already suffers from breathing difficulties. Niloofar, Mahin’s youngest daughter, believes herself to be a relative free agent – but she carries a burden of family expectations that are heavier even than the air.
The film’s title refers to the phenomenon of ‘thermal inversion’, where in certain weather conditions air sits like a heavy blanket of fine dust. The visual metaphor here is not difficult to discern.
Sahar Dowlatshahi delivers a gently convincing performance as Niloofar, who is unmarried and therefore feels an oppressive familial and societal obligation to look after her ailing mum while carrying on her business. Behazadi offers tiny little glimpses of Niloofar’s boxed-in domain: choosing her headscarf for a date, watering her plants, being kind to her teenage niece. Mother has been told by her doctors to stay indoors during the heavy smog, but her dogged determination to go out clearly signals that trouble is brewing.
Behazadi’s filmmaking is plain, clear and unfussy: directorial flourishes are never allowed to get in the way of the simple yet engaging storytelling. Within moments of the opening credits, we learn a lot about Niloofar: a happy, smiley soul who cares for her mother; a good employer to the women in her workshop; a thirty-something who has a date with a charming man she clearly can’t wait to see. There is an apparent inevitability about the progression of the plot as we are introduced to the rest of Niloofar’s family, who feel they can manipulate their sister into giving up her life to take her mum to cleaner air in the north of the country. Added to the mix is a brother, Farhad (played with shabby shiftiness by Ali Mosaffa), a rather nasty piece of work who has run up big debts and sees the opportunity of paying them off by renting out Niloofar’s Teheran premises.
The social pressures put on the ‘independent’ woman are cleverly layered so that we get to feel a growing sense of tension. Niloofar has some very difficult choices to make. Such dilemmas are, of course, the stuff of movie making – and Behazadi successfully cuts through the unfamiliar constraints in modern Iranian society to make a statement that is much more universal.
How will Niloofar’s dilemma be resolved? Will she buckle to the suffocating pressures of her scheming family? There is something Ibseneque in the way that she decides, and the film will keep you guessing to the very end, when you come up for air.
Inversion is playing at the Arts Picturehouse on Tuesday 25th October at 2.30pm.
httpvh://youtu.be/XgAC3LdX2PA