Starring Mania Akbari, Roya Arabshahi. Written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami. (PG) 90 min. Opens May 9.
Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami's latest experiment, Ten, is
perhaps the most rigorously formalized film of his career, unfolding
entirely through the perspective of a digital video camera mounted on
the dashboard of a taxi. It's a series of conversations spaced out over
several days between the car's driver, a glamorous Iranian woman (Mania
Akbari) and her various passengers. It is -- deep breath -- a
confrontational experiment in narrative cinema. And it works.
We
learn little about the driver, except that she's earned a divorce from
her husband and has managed to fend for herself ever since. In the
extraordinary 10-minute opening sequence, the camera stays on the face
of her 10-year-old son, whom she is driving to soccer practice. He's
frighteningly articulate as he describes her failings as a single
parent, his anger over his father's remarriage boiling over in a
petulant stream of complaints.
The scenes between the driver and her son form the backbone of Ten,
while the other episodes, including a memorable sequence with a
hectoring prostitute, are self-contained exchanges. Significantly, the
other passengers are all female -- if Ten can be said to have a
theme, it is gender politics. The film is bracing not merely because
it's progressive, but because it doesn't trumpet its own momentousness.
The modernity it represents is clear-eyed and casual.
Kiarostami has called
Ten a "film without a director,"
because beyond devising the scenario and editing the footage, he claims
he had nothing to do with its creation. The dialogue was improvised
entirely by the actors, and the cinematography is entirely static. And
yet, there is an intense fascination in its artlessness. Watching
Ten
elicits feelings both of admiration and bewilderment at how a filmmaker
can operate at so great a remove from his material and nevertheless
shape it with such distinctive finesse.