Dah

The premise is very simple. A beautiful Iranian woman, married to her second husband (in a society that makes divorce nearly impossible for women to obtain) drives her car around town. She takes her son to a swim meet, goes shopping with her sister, gives an old woman a lift to Prayer, etc. The title of the film refers to the fact that there are 10 "chapters" to the film, each representing a different conversation she has with her various passengers on different days. By experiencing these exchanges, the viewer can expect a crash course on middle class life in Iran. Like middle class life anywhere, there are the written rules and conventions that one must obey, and then there are the practicalities, and the REalities. There is what is true, and what people tell themselves is true; what they want, and what they tell themselves they want. As in any society on earth, including this highly controlled, religiously based one, there is the hypocrisy. And we can soon see from the conversations our Driver has with her passengers, that there are also the largely unspoken hopes, fears, needs and insecurities of these people, who often appear to be going through the motions of life, rather than truly living it.

The film mostly focuses on how women view this world; but their perspective is primarily organized around and driven by their relationships with men, be they fathers, boyfriends, husbands or sons. The film is difficult to watch at first, because things quickly escalate into discomfort with the driver's very first passenger, but sticking it out is well worth the investment, as the exchanges each build on the ones that came before it, getting progressively deeper and deeper.

The women in this film are covered from head to foot, but still manage to lay themselves completely bare to us. It's a very simple concept, elevated to an amazing accomplishment. You will learn a great deal about life in Iran, people in general, and possibly yourself. I expect to be thinking about this movie for weeks, if not much much longer.

"Ten" really impressed me for many reasons. The first one is the interpretation of the non-professional actresses and the boy Amin Maher. It is simply amazing the first sequence (number 10) with fifteen minutes of dialogs between the lead character and her son without any cut. The second reason is the intense and impressive insight in the repressed women's world in Iran. I believe that most of the Westerns have no idea about the feelings and the culture of Iranian women, and Abbas Kiarostami shows very real dialogs picturing the lifestyle of a middle class woman and some samples in other women of different classes (the prostitute, the religious woman etc.). The third reason was the simplicity and the originality of the location: inside a car, with a divorced woman transporting her resented son; her sister; a prostitute; an old lady; and a romantic young woman, along different days. I would never imagine such a splendid scenario for a movie with such a theme. Last but not the least, the remarkable beauty of the face of the driver (Mania Akbari) is awesome: she is exotic for Brazilian standards, but really a very beautiful woman. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "10 Dez" ("10 Ten")

Yes, it's a gimmick: the entire film is shot from the dashboard of a car, and only the driver and the passenger are heard and (sometimes) seen. This gimmick will not please everyone, and hardly qualifies the film as a masterpiece. But Hitchcock's brilliant "Rear Window" was a gimmick too, and Kiarostami's "10" is no less worthy of attention. A movie has to be done well, regardless of its tricks, and "10" fits the bill. The driver of the car also drives the conflict; she is a recently divorced Iranian woman in a country in which women barely have the right to divorce at all. As the city rushes past--it's great fun to watch the people and places outside--she curses the drivers and pedestrians along the way but holds her own against the crises in the passenger's seat. Funny thing about a car: it gives one the sense of control (here, that's clearly an illusion) and the oxymoronic ability to remain private even while out in public. She and her women passengers air their grievances within this zone of safety; a scene in which a passenger slowly removes her head covering, a symbol of repression, is moving and unsettling. The greatest conflict, however, is between the driver and her young son, who's bitter about the divorce and lets his mother unravel until he, not she, controls where the car is heading. The boy's performance is astonishingly real, as much for the way he fills the silences as for his sharp and sometimes humorous counterpoints. The film could have done without the "countdown" of the 10 conversations--the source of the title--but no matter: everything in between is a delight.

8 out of 10

I have seen many impressive Iranian films over the years. "Ten" may be the very best of them for a variety of reasons. I think the film is remarkable because it looks so simple, but I imagine setting up the camera and capturing the realistic dialogue and plot-line we see in the film had to have taken a lot of preparation. I also think the director deliberately chose scenery to accommodate the backdrop of the film, and he must have driven around Teheran constantly to figure out which images to put in the background. I think the scenes with the murals of new arch-conservative president are very telling. "Ten" seems to have a lot of messages under the radar, including the subversive powers of all governments (certainly including our own in America) to censor art. I think the relationship between the mother and her son is a very poignant one, and it shows how children and adults simply live in different spheres of the universe. Film is strikingly similar in some aspects to American independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson's film "Signal 7" which came out over 20 years ago.

The film shows ten rides of a female cab-driver in modern Teheran. The protagonist (a sunglasses-wearing beautiful woman) share a ride with her son, her sister, an old faithful lady, a prostitute and a female stranger. She discuss life and social issues, and repeatedly argue with her son about her recent divorce with the boy's dad.

The movie is technically interesting and well shaped.

---- Structure The film rolls the 10 sequences introduced by a a classic old school countdown which creates a sense of formal structure, giving the film an apparent "rigid" putting the audience as "analyst".

---- Camera and Sound Only two camera angles are used in the film (beside an odd little part where we see the prostitute outside of the car ...). And the sound is very basically real and full (city's life and traffic).

---- Content But above all, despise what some will say about the apparent boringness of the film, the content is amazingly absorbing. The issues raised are universal (divorce, women's position in society, love, despair, faith ...) and perfectly rendered by these non-actors.

One last point, the female protagonist is BEAUTIFUL !