Women Without Men

Visually ambitious Iranian film, tackling themes of politics and femininity. We did enjoy it, thematically found it compelling and well told, visually were impressed by imagines and certain aspects. In certain sections we were, though, dissapointed with the direction and photography.
The good points first; the plot is wonderfully well though out (based on a novel) with a nice peripatetic structure. The magical realism of the piece wonderfully evokes the half0dead/half-alive life of the women of Iran. The plot was not intended to grind down the women, but it was suitably pessimistic on occassion. Quite simply, the incidents feel connected (decent intercutting) and are simply interesting, with potent symbolism. What we have in this film is a lot of hardcore identification in the shot choices and narrative following, which could be potentially tedious but feels justified in a film about oppression as this.
Visually, we appreciate the longer takes and the bleached out colour palate for its ambition. However, there are problems.
Firstly, the mis-en-shot doesn't really work. The director can't quite put her actors in the correct place, and are forced to have a rather clumsy trope of circling around them. This leads to the whole piece becoming quite literally two-dimensional; horizontal not depth perception. Another more surprising problem (considering the director is a photographer) is simply that many of the images lack balance. They just don't seem that well put together, or taken from the right angle to achieve any effect. Odd.
We have said the colour does something, though it looks washed out it is in fact of a very high contrast, and the set dressing as much as anything prevents bright colours interfering. This high contrast has though disadvantages, however interesting it may be on occasion; the picture can lack texture and, once again, lack depth. Not a lot of tacticility on show when the burkha is a black clump.
Overall, this is a good film. It does not though appear to be overly well directed, on a imagistic level.