Writer-director Ali Soozandeh wastes no time in mounting his lovingly rotoscoped attack on sexual hypocrisy in Islamic Iran: the film opens with a man paying a desperate woman for a drive-time blowjob while her son sits in the backseat. The sordid scenario gets interrupted only when the driver spots another man holding his own daughter’s hand while she walks down the street. How dare he! Now then, why is the woman willing to suck in front of her son? Because her jailed, drug-addict husband won’t grant her a divorce, and she’s out of options. But hey, at least the local magistrate is willing to trade sex for a decent apartment, where our wise and world-weary whore encounters other folks struggling between what is allowed — or rather, what is not allowed, under penalty of law — and what is actually done. Surprise, surprise, a lot of "what is actually done" is sexual, and relies on the notion that women are essentially subservient and also a little less than human. Happily, Soozandah is more humanist than polemicist, so that what follows is less about the system than the people navigating it: a wife unhappy at the prospect of domesticity, a woman looking for work, a musician in needs of funds, etc. Besides looking great, the animated aspect lends a step of remove that helps render the awfulness tolerable — to look at, anyway. (2017) — Matthew Lickona
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