Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Facing Mirrors: No, being a trans Iranian is not a bowl of cherries
Posted by Gina at 10:58 AM
http://skipthemakeup.blogspot.com/2012/06/facing-mirrors-no-being-trans-iranian.htmlFacing Mirrors is part of the exciting new Iranian cinema which is flourishing and offering subtle social criticism despite being created within the shadow of religious fundamentalism. First time woman director, Negar Azarbayjani, who also co-wrote the script, has woven a powerful and sometimes even humorous tale which, like the recent Iranian masterwork, A Separation, deals with complex intertwining issues of women's roles in society, familial bonds and craziness, class structure, bureaucracy, manhood and religion. But at the core of Facing Mirrors is the story of Eddie, a trans man who can no longer live in his country, especially under the crushing impact of his powerful, wealthy father, who is disgusted by his trans son and wishes to marry him off (as a woman) to a cousin.
Along the way, Eddie's life becomes intricately woven with that of Rana, a single mom whose husband is in prison for the long haul after his embezzling business partner left him with insurmountable debts. She supports her son and herself by driving a cab (she only picks up women customers), a gutsy and pretty much unheard of occupation among Iranian women. Eddie (sometimes also known by his birth name of Adineh) is on the run from his dad and older brother, and gets picked up by Rana as he's escaping from a fight and offers her a ton of money to drive him to a border city away from Tehran where he can wait for his passport to be processed. He wants to return to Germany where he lived for a while, began his transition and was previously on T, yet was lured back to Iran under false pretenses and trapped by his father. Rana clocks him as a scary female thief. (Eddie is mostly dressed in vaguely homeboy style with closely cropped hair) She wonders where he got all his money and expensive jewelry (which belonged to Eddie's late mom and he sells to fund his transition and escape) and his very "unladylike" behavior. While Rana is a rebel in her own way she's, at heart, of a lower, likely less educated and much more conservative class than Eddie. The first half of the film is a kind of harrowing yet sometimes funny road film, with Rana and Eddie as opposites each, in their own way, societal outcasts and alternately annoying and learning about one another.
