Long before I watched My Favorite Cake, I was struck by the power of some of the scenes shown in its trailer. I wasn’t alone and this wonder was shared by thousands of Iranians who watched the viral trailer. In a particularly memorable scene, Mahin (Leyli Farhadpour) pours a glass of wine for Faramarz (Esmayil Mehrabi) as the two septuagenarians share a meal at her garden. “Has the wine made you a bit tipsy, too?” she asks in a neat Persian.
This is a rather ordinary event, a couple enjoying a drink at home. But none of it can be portrayed in Iranian films according to the rule imposed by the Ministry of Culture: Mahin appearing without her head covered, an unmarried couple hitting it off and, of course, the serving of alcohol. This why the film’s co-directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha had to make the film in hiding. When the authorities found out, they were banned from leaving the country but still managed to smuggle a version out for it to be screened at the main competition at Berlinale last year. Although they’ve since received much accolades around the world, they are still unable to leave the country. The film has been doing well at the box-office in European countries such as Germany and recently also screened at the Third annual Iranian Film Festival in New York where Farhadpour received a special mention award for her acting.
The shocking fate of the film and its directors is a reminder of the bizarre rules that have hung over Iranian cinema since the 1979 revolution. There is censorship in many authoritarian states in the world but which other forbids the depiction of even a basic handshake between a man and a woman? Part of a burgeoning underground cinema, and alongside an Iranian diasporic cinema, My Favorite Cake is an attempt to break this bizarre chokehold not to show anything particularly racy or outrageous; but to depict the most basic elements of life which remain forbidden by an anti-life political regime. This gives the film so much power.
But My Favorite Cake does much more than simply transgressing a set of rules. Although it has clear politics, it doesn’t dissolve into didacticism. It is a deeply felt film with two convincing characters whose plights and desires are sui generis to Iran and at once universal. Mahin has been living alone since her husband passed away thirty years ago. Faramarz is a single taxi driver, a veteran of Iran’s pre-1979 army, just like Mahin’s late husband. They meet at a restaurant dedicated to veterans. This plot point is already political, making them both as representing a generation which remembers the pre-revolution Iran, linked to one of its most emblematic institutions, the military. The politics of the film is shown even more pointedly when Mahin confronts Tehran’s moral police as it tries to arrest a young woman who is not covering her hair up to their draconian standards. It is touching scene of intergenerational solidarity with Mahin and the young girl at awe of one another.
But this isn’t a sloganeering film (unlike Mohammad Rasoulof’s Oscars-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig which wears its politics on its sleeve and utterly fails as a movie.) This is because it works to build up its characters and give them a tangible, human quality. They are not there as mere symbols.
Mahin’s quest for a bit of joy and desire in life is particularly convincing. It is not just an Iranian story since she is hampered not just by the regime but by societal expectations of senior citizens known in most cultures around the world. She must overcome these boundaries and her attempt to do is depicted as joyful, funny, sometimes silly but ultimately admirable and touching.
The Iranian freedom struggles have recently adopted the slogan For a Normal Life. It is precisely what the Islamic Republic denies them: the basic pleasures of life. My Favorite Cake is an apt cinematic expression of the same spirit.
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