Locarno Review: The Form (2024)
Locarno Film Festival
Pardi di Domani International Competition
There is barely anyone who wouldn’t want to go back to the past, but if you were given that chance to somehow revisit a certain chapter of your life, I bet you wouldn’t choose teendom. I know for certain that I wouldn’t. I’d rather skip on re-living the chaos of hormonal confusion, self-annihilation, nerve-wracking discussions with parents, having to accept too many changes at once and re-discovering sexuality in the awkward, difficult way. We’ve all been there and we know that being a teenager is hell. So, how do you deal with all that drama as a girl living in a place where women’s rights are being stomped on? According to the Persian actress turned helmer Melika Pazouki, not as different as one would think, but with an extra twist or two.
In her directorial debut The Form, Pazouki casts her gaze at the fifteen-year-old Eli (Saba Mirzanejad) who is excited about her first date with a man she had met on the internet. She is sure about the happy outcome of the whole thing. After all, they communicated via video calls. The decision to go all the way is already made in her head, and she is getting ready for the big moment. The sprang-a-langs are being trimmed (the film’s opener), a splash of glitter is put on the face, and a fresh coat of lipstick is applied. There is plenty of laughter coming from the other side of the wall, in the bathroom of an all-girls school in Tehran, where Eli’s best friend (played by Dorsa Shirazi) is waiting to give her extra bits of advice. “Did you bring the condoms?” she wants to know, and Eli isn’t sure why this should be her responsibility. All set to go and finally “get over it”, she leaves the school in fine feather, stopping at a store to prevent any potential “accidents”. With this backup safely behind her, she’s off to the meeting place to finally see her digital boyfriend in person.
Much is said, but plenty is left to our imagination which is one of the strongest trumps of the film. There is, of course, a slight hint at a significant age gap between the two (not yet) lovers. Eli is supposed to go to the man’s office after he comes to pick her up, but nothing plays out as expected. What happened there? Was he scared? Is he maybe married? Did he change his mind? If so, out of decency or for practical reasons? There are no answers delivered to those questions, but many more are given in the form of small, subtle commentaries on the fragility of teenage dreams and expectations, but also on both official and unwritten societal rules. Mirzanejad proves to be an excellent casting choice and her cheerful, playful on-screen character is even more accentuated through Iman Salehi’s push-ins.
In its well-paced thirteen-minute runtime, The Form shows a micro-universe of dreams shattered by a higher force without taking away a grain of its main protagonist’s strength and joie de vivre. The rock-solid script comes to life through the excellent performance and the intimacy built between Mirzanejad and the camera lens that never leaves her side. It is difficult to grasp how this film came to be considering the number of taboos it broke in the country of its origin. In her official director’s notes, Pazouki admits that creating films on sexual desire is forbidden, but that “the passion is so savage that it defies all boundaries and could never be stopped.” The courage Iranian artists have been showing since the beginning of the protests in 2022 is enormous, and their resistance to censorship is growing stronger and stronger.
Original Title: FORM
English Title: The Form
Country: Iran
Language: Persian
Year: 2024
Runtime: 13′
Written/ Directed by: Melika Pazouki
Cast: Saba Mirzanejad, Dorsa Shirazi
Producer: Navid Mohammadzadeh
Executive Producer: Farnoosh Samadi
