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Audio Format: DD 5.1 Video Format: Widescreen 1.66:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Persian, Thai Subtitles: English, Thai Region Code: PAL Year Made: 2000 Running Time: 75
Please note: Please verify that PAL formatted DVD will play on your machine prior to purchasing this title. (PAL TV and DVD players required.)
 A popular cinematic structure of late is the story in three parts. Critical favorites like Traffic and Amores Perros used it with great aplomb, and now along comes The Day I Became a Woman, a drama from Iran which uses the model to depict the lives of three female characters at different ages. It's a terrific motif for showing the ways in which women are subjugated by Iranian society throughout their lives.
The first story is called "Hava" and as it opens the title character, played by the adorable Fatemeh Cherag Akhar, has just reached her ninth birthday. The simple story is about Hava, having arrived at the day when she becomes a woman, being restrained from playing with her best pal, Hassan (Hassan Nebhan). Though her mother and grandmother give her a brief respite from her new yoke, there is no doubt that the friendship will not be allowed to continue. Most viewers will be able to relate to this moving though slight story, since almost everyone has had something meaningful taken away during their childhoods.
In "Ahoo Ahoo," the second story, a teenaged girl is shown in a bike race with other young women. A visit on horseback from her husband complicates matters as he insists that she remove herself from the competition and she perseveres with her pedaling, until he uses harsher means of stopping her progress. The cinematography is gorgeous and the ending is appropriately indeterminate, but the sequence itself is fairly dull. Even Olympic broadcasts don't show over 20 continuous minutes of people cycling.
In "Houra," the third and most effective sequence, an elderly woman (Azizeh Sedighi) goes on a buying spree for furniture to decorate her home. Little bits of cloth tied around her fingers remind her of specific things to purchase, such as a washing machine and a mirror. Before long, she amasses quite an assemblage of items, and there's a surreal sequence where her new possessions are set up on a beach with the help of local children. This is followed by a surprising and quite haunting final image, where the woman leaves the shore with her belongings, headed for the island where she will set up her new residence.
There are a couple of other great moments in Marzieh Meshkini's film, but it is ultimately too flimsy and brief (at a scant 78 minutes) to really have an impact. Iranian cinema is currently experiencing quite a vogue, and audiences have been able to see great movies like The White Balloon and Children of Heaven as a result. The problem with any artistic craze is that mediocre works will eventually make their way through, and The Day I Became a Woman is a good example of this phenomenon.
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