UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY is the first U.S. release of a film by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, one of Iran's most acclaimed directors and widely considered its foremost woman filmmaker. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival and an official selection at the Toronto, Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals. 

Unlike Kiarostami's over-praised, stretched-out 'One Act' dialogy film "Ten" of gorgeous women and a cute boy trapped in a Jeep -which an NYU student could make for less than $50,000- UNDER THE SKIN is a full feature film with a real plot, interesting characters, dramatic action and development.  

UNDER THE SKIN... provides a fresh and provocative vision of Iranian society in its depiction of a working-class mother who finds herself taking enormous risks to fight for her home, family and very existence. This film opened in New York on March 14th, and will release in Los Angeles on April 4th,  followed by a national roll-out.

Set in inner-city Tehran at the time of Iran's 1997 general elections, UNDER THE SKIN centers on Tuba, a hard-working mother of four, who is faced with unexpected challenges that threaten her family and way of life. Oldest son Abbas works to obtain a foreign work visa, which he hopes will allow him to escape the Mullahs' oppressive religious regime to better his family's lot and win the hand of a pretty office girl. To make his final payment, he sells the family home, but when his travel plans fall apart, Tuba is forced to take drastic measures to save the home and her son.  

UNDER THE SKIN is a stirring, powerful drama and, unlike any Iranian film seen in the U.S. thus far, it breaks apart more established representations of Iranian society, providing us with a view that differs surprisingly little from our own. It also shows dancing of girls and women's hair in spite of Mullahs' censors. Some of the scenes are as melodramatic as Hollywood's great 1950 films: The old woman washing out her frustrations in the court yard in the middle of the night does not need rain and thunder; nor do the ending snow scenes need melodramatic sound and voice over. But overall this is a worthy film about real people 'under the skin' of the apparently 'spiritual' Mullahs' Iran. The story is acted by a great cast, especially the roles played by actresses.

Born in 1954 and a filmmaker since the late seventies, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad has made nine documentaries and several features, including NARGESS (1992), THE BLUE-VEILED (1994) and THE MAY LADY (1998). Her films have boldly critiqued social norms and denounced cultural taboos, often running her afoul of Iran's censors. The honesty and style of Bani-Etemad¹s work has resonated with Iranian audiences. Both THE BLUE-VEILED and UNDER THE SKIN  were the top box-office hits in the years of their release and ranked at the top of Iranian film critics' polls.

KIAROSTAMI'S "TEN".

The best part of UNDER THE SKIN is the end. The old tough lady Tuba faces the camera and says passionately, "Stop making these silly films! Make a film to show what I feel here" pointing to her heart. This seems to be directed at the likes of Kiarostami who have lately given up making real films.  Kiarostami's 'Ten' is a cheap -literally cheap, given the incredible dollar to touman rate!- 'skin' film with superficial references to the suffering of Iranian women under mediaeval Shaaria laws of Iran's Mullahs. (Incidentally, Iran lacks serious union protections for editors, actors, etc. So Kiarostami, like many Iranian directors, takes the credit for the editor as well as writer/director. By contrast American directors, like Scorsese, get intimately involved with writing and editing but they choose rightly to leave writing and editing credits to the otherwise unsung artists.)

New Yorker's review of Ten: "It's is a postmodern gesture, a movie seemingly without a director, a drama that is also a documentary...." Postmodern, yes; without a director...a documentary, more or less; but drama? What drama!?  "Kiarostami's minimalist methods enhance a palpable sense of lives choked with frustrations..."  Minimalist? Uh-huh.

Modern museums and Japanese businessmen are stuck with blanc or silly minimalist paintings they bought in the 60's, 70's and in the booming 80's which they now have to defend by labeling them with high-brow, meaningless words like "postmodernism" or "structuralism" as in this review in Film Comment by Philip Lopate, Nov/Dec 2002:

"Kiarostami's claustrophobically immobile car dialogues in his superlative, structuralism-infected 'Ten'...."    Hmmm!

"It's a new departure for Kiarostami" commented a well-meaning Iranian academic fan at New York Film Fest screening of Ten. To which a film buff friend who is also an Iranophile murmured, "It maybe a new departure for him, but it's a disaster for us- I want my money back!"

History will judge why both Cannes and NY film festivals chose Kiarostami's experimental but shallow "post-modernist, structuralist" 'Ten' over such real films as Bahman Ghobadi's striking 'Marooned in Iraq'<Marooned In Iraq> or Etemad's  worthy drama 'Under The Skin'. 

Unlike Rakhshan Etemad, Kiarostami did not bother to go 'under the skin.' "Ten" is designed to impress the festival, modernist, post-modernist, conceptualist, minimalist, structuralist, film critic, pseudo intellectual and film academic types who seem to be fascinated by the soft, spiritual 'skin' of today's Iranian society, ignoring the ills and sufferings that lie beneath the skin. 

If these festivals and film critics continue to applaud anything directed by Kiarostami, soon he could be offering us blanc screens and he could walk naked into the festivals....and we would be told of "The Emperor's fine clothes!" Let's hope the talented master filmmaker Kiarostami returns to films like his superb 'Through The Olive Trees' and 'Close UP'- this last chosen by experts as one of 150 masterpieces of the world cinema <150 Master Films>.

Panahi (The Circle), Majidi (Baran), Iranian Kurd Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq), Milani (Two Women, Shokaran) and Bani-Etemad (Under The Skin) -these last two notably women- are the directors who are making real movies, often taking risks with the Iran's Mullahs' censors in tackling tough stories of people toiling under the Islam Republic.  By contrast recent productions of Kiarostami and other directors' are soft films about cute children and pretty women with pretentious references to spiritual Islam or quotations from Omar Khaayam. They end up being almost apologists for the Mullahs' oppressive and corrupt regime. 

Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and other Iranian directors have even found time to film "politically-popular" foreign noble subjects of AIDS in Africa and women's lot under Talibans of Afghanistan. 

Are some top Iranian men directors, who live like Pashas in Tehran, playing it too safe with the ruling Mullahs, avoiding the hundreds of stories of sufferings and bizarre themes and scenes of the Iranian people under the oppressive, medieval, corrupt oxymoronic Islamic Republic of Iran? Compare Kiarostami's recent films -including plot- less and directionless 'And The Wind Will Carry Us' and his so so documentary 'And Life Goes On' that pretended to be a film- with the late Kurdish filmmaker Yilmaz Guney's 'The Wall' and 'Yol' <Yol>. This latter film 'Yol' he directed while toiling inside Turkish prison. Epic drama 'Yol', which is much richer than Kiarostami's 'Close-Up', is also rightly chosen by experts as one of 150 masterpieces of world cinema <150 Master Films>.

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