Like visual artist Steve McQueen, who also recently made the shift from museums and galleries to the cinema with a story involving British imperialism and the body politic made literal, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat certainly knows how to speak without words. Winner of the Silver Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival, Neshat's debut feature, “Women Without Men,” is based on a novel with magical-realist flourishes by author Shahrnush Parsipur (who also has a delightful turn as a brothel madam in the movie), and like its source, the film's images are painstakingly crafted and painfully alive. Which makes this film about the death of a democracy, and which opens with a suicide, all the more compelling.
To read the rest of my review visit New Directors/New Films 2010 at Slant Magazine.
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