Pursued by Demons: A Stalker, a Husband and a Repressive
Society
The New York Times
July 21, 2000
"Two Women" was shown as part of this year's New Directors/New
Films Series. Following are excerpts from Lawrence Van Gelder's review,
which appeared in The New York Times on April 1. The film opens
today at the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village.
Although it bears the title "Two Women," Tahmine Milani's
film is really about one. And her name is legion.
While "Two Women" is set in Iran, the suffering woman at its
compassionate heart may be found wherever those like her are denied a right
to education and work, are oppressed and abused by husbands, are stalked
by violent, obsessive men and are denied recourse in court.
"I am a human being!" she cries in despair at one point. But
almost no one seems to care.
Ms. Milani's impressive, unsettling, deeply felt film about a brilliant
young woman trapped and reduced to hopelessness in a society that accords
her no right to equality is said to have been a sensation when released
last year in Iran.
The women of the title are Fereshteh and Roya, who meet as university
students in Tehran and become fast friends in the tumultuous period of
the Iranian revolution of the late 1970's, when factions dedicated to the
clerical forces of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini clashed with westernized
intellectuals and liberals on campuses.
Although Roya, who comes from a liberal background, goes on to a meaningful
career in architecture and marriage to a husband who is her partner in
career and family, Fereshteh's life plays out in a hell bordered on one
side by a knife- and acid-wielding stalker and on the other by a husband
who reneges on a promise to allow her to continue her education, keeps
her locked in their home, hides the telephone and flies into rages at the
thought that she might want to resume her schooling, work, possess books
or educate their children.
Somewhere in the middle stands Fereshteh's family, including a father
who condemns himself for ever having allowed her to attend the university
and regards himself as humiliated and stripped of dignity by her role as
the stalker's prey, though at times he can appreciate her profound unhappiness
in the marriage he arranged for her.
As for the courts, they can neither recognize Fereshteh fully as the
stalker's victim after one of his assaults results in the death of a child,
nor can they find grounds for divorce for a woman stripped of her spirit
and self-esteem by the psychological abuse of her husband.
The story of Fereshteh, brought wrenchingly to life by Niki Karimi,
unfolds in a a flashback when, years after their first encounter, she summons
Roya to meet her in a Tehran hospital.
The two women bond as architecture students when Roya hires Fereshteh
to tutor her in math. Fereshteh, from a small town and a family of modest
means, comes as a refreshing surprise to Roya, whose background is more
elevated. Fereshteh is intellectually gifted. She can drive. She has taught
herself English. She is self-confident and bold.
But Fereshteh's life turns bleak when she becomes the target of the
stalker, who not only makes her life hell but also follows her after she
returns to her family when an attack by him goes awry as the universities
are being closed down.
The stalker vows to find her, and he does, chasing her on a motorcycle
as she drives at high speed in search of a police station, until his bike
and her car encounter a group of children playing in the street.
In the court case that follows, Fereshteh's father contracts a debt
of honor to the man he persuades her to marry. The stalker is sentenced
to 13 years in prison.
Fereshteh, too, will pass most of this time behind locked doors. One
day, she and the stalker will emerge.
Links
