Directed by: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz
Distributed by: Greenwich Entertainment
Written by Eric Zhu
50/100
Thankfully, Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz’s “The Friend’s House is Here” isn’t a direct response to Kiarostami’s 1987 classic “Where is the Friend’s House?” Instead, the title is indicative of the film’s self-aware stylization and its comparatively declarative tone. Centered on the friendship between two female artists Hanna and Pari, the film opens on one of Pari’s shows, a piece of Brechtian performance art where actors enact their daily routines within a white soundstage. This prefaces a fizzy hangout film about cosmopolitan urban adults, almost like a Whit Stillman film filtered through Sundance aesthetics. It’s an interesting choice, showing a vibrant, urban culture generally outside the purview of Iranian cinematic export while also depicting the liberation as a sort of fragile performance. While hosting dinner parties, attending shows, and going on dates, these artists seem to live outside of orthodox societal norms. When passerby’s scold Hanna and Pari for refusing to wear their hijabs, the women simply laugh in their faces. While the artifice projects a fun hang more than actually embodying one, this world does have a certain gravity given the film’s clandestine production and the ongoing war in Iran.
Midway through the film, one of the artists questions how long this vibrant community can survive, and sure enough, the implicit threats hanging over both the film and its production eventually rear their head. Pari is imprisoned, and the bail money threatens Hanna’s plans to emigrate to France. The nested quest narratives, first to procure Pari’s bail money, and then to repay Hanna so she can pay for her flight, are the film’s most Kiarostami-esque stretches, not least because of their deviance from urban centers and their prevalence of long takes.
These relatively brief detours peel back Hanna and Pari’s lives to reveal the vigilance required to maintain their level of nonchalance. One could also say that by harkening back to Kiarostami, whose original film sidestepped government censorship by sublimating its rebellion into children’s entertainment, Keshavarz and Ataei are commenting on just how little progress has been made in the intervening decades.
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