Farnoosh Samadi’s feature debut is a chilling, quietly brutal drama that examines the real-life tensions caused by patriarchal society. Set in and around Tehran, Iran’s capital, 180° Rule focuses on a middle-class schoolteacher and mother.
One of the first scenes shows her rushing to aid a pregnant student who has been taking pills. Through this, Sara, played with sombre intensity by Sahar Dolatshahi, is made instantly sympathetic. Even her eyes, always passionately searching the frame, appear to express this. She seems to epitomise fairness and sincerity.
To say that the film punishes her for these qualities would be downplaying it. What begins as an investigation into an uneven, controlling relationship gives way to a barrage of tragedies. Indeed, our first glimpses into her home life seem relatively comfortable, marred only by the grating dominance and dismissiveness of her husband Hamed. They resemble each other solely in adoring their daughter.
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He is not a stereotypically abusive man. More the product of a system, he benefits from a mutual understanding that Sara’s passions are viewed as unimportant, and that her surroundings reinforce this. There is an invisible line that is far more in his favour than 180 degrees would suggest. Crossing it would be unthinkable. Subdued, carefully controlled blues and beiges draw attention to this dull melancholy. Still, she has a worthwhile life.
Quickly, things fall apart. In a cruel act of reversed moralism, Sara and her daughter are involved in an accident when she decides to attend a family wedding out of town. Hamed, after being called away for work, had previously forbidden her from going. It is as though 180° Rule’s narrative is replicating the entrapment, reinforcing its totality by permitting nothing to go the way it should, the way our characters deserve.
These choices aren’t quite reductive but still reside in that grim territory of inevitable misery. Tonally it aims for a kind of subtlety, foreshadowing and slyly insinuating these moments. Yet it is obvious from an early stage that the film’s sole perspective will be one of suffering. The experience, even over a slim runtime, is strenuous and painful. For a film that centres so reliably on showing tragic events, you would expect something a little more taut.
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Plot threads dangle slightly. Characters do not conflict with each-other so much as just wallow in disgust and anger. The horrors that befall them seem orchestrated, tricks to provoke rather than to make us understand. Sometimes it is difficult whether to judge these kind of plots as manipulative or vital. Perhaps the fact that the material is handled with so little imagination puts this in the former camp.
Despite the relatively unremarkable narrative, the movie is still expressive in terms of its themes and muted style. Sara’s vibrant family and friends connote her impulse towards a greater freedom over her choices. In one scene she gossips with other teachers about wearing nail polish, quieting down as some of her older peers stroll past. There is a cultural shift occurring and it is defined by two sides. Hamed’s control is not just the extension of a societal bias: it is the absence of colour.
Reinforcing these ideas is an equally austere sense of direction. Samadi’s camerawork is often static, observing the haunt of Sara and her extended family. Occasionally characters are placed on the other side of the car window, the vehicle itself reflecting that unreachable status of independence and freedom. Driving forms a key element of her repression. Sara is often seen doing it, but is not allowed to drive outside of the city.
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After her husband returns from business, Sara begins to lie about the accident, further angering him. Their relationship subsides from genteel inequality to anger and disarray. Even legal proceedings occur, through which she maintains a heavy silence. It is unclear whether this is meant to be interpreted as a kind of stoicism or shock. The former would encode her as a martyr, turning the movie’s sustained suffering into something almost cathartic. At least we are not her. At least we believe in her purpose.
Throughout this admittedly confident debut, it is this distance and this rigid drive towards the obvious and the depressing that sours. Arguably a whole wealth of interesting debates are suggested by the film. In Hamed’s limitation of her driving, for example, misogynist stereotypes become terrible, articulated facts.
The focus however is the inability to move, something that ensnares the audience at all times. While the sentiment is as authentic as anything, the presentation cries out for more complexity, more ways of feeling that leave us with less emptiness.
