CIRCUMSTANCE (2011)

Rated:  R


Stars: Nikohl Booshen,  Sarah Kazemy,  Reza Sixo Safai


Director: Maryam  Keshavarz


Genre: Art House/Drama


Iran might be considered one of the more "progressive" states in the middle east, if you count the fact that women can show their faces,  and other TITILLATING patches of skin--such as elbows--in public. But that's misleading. What we in the west consider to be basic human rights--freedom of press, religion, sexual preference--still do not exist. The latter is explored in Circumstance, which I am ranking as one of the best films of 2011.


Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheen) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) are two beautiful, sophisticated (by local standards) teenage girls living in Tehran. They wish only to be allowed to explore the mutual attraction they feel for each other without fear of reprisal.


Atafeh comes from a well-to-do family. She is an aspiring singer. She dreams of fame. Shireen is the orphaned daughter of political journalists who met a bad end at the hand of the repressive Islamic revolution--underscoring what's at stake here for the lovers. 


They party at underground clubs, shedding their mandated conservative attire to reveal  miniskirts beneath. Here they can dance, do dope, and explore their emerging sexuality with peers--JUST LIKE REGULAR TEENAGERS IN THE WEST!  


But there's a fly in the ointment. Atafeh's brother, Mehran, (Reza Sixo Safai) has recently returned home from a stint in drug rehab. Now he's embraced Islamic fundamentalism with a zealotry that shows in his eyes. The devious Mehran is the personification of all that is callous and hypocritical about repressive religious and/or governmental systems--he displays an almost too polite smile to his family members, while secretly filming their every move via a system of hidden cameras he has installed in their home--ostensibly to report any "improprieties" to the government's Morality Police.


Kazemy is a young, olive-skinned Angelina Jolie.  Boshen will remind you of a budding Laura Dern. Both are newcomers, but you'd never know it. They pull it  off, including most of their clothes for some tasteful yet convincingly steamy scenes together.  


Circumstance, from Iranian-American director Maryam Kehavarz, illuminates the ideological clash that exists in modern day Iran through the story of Atafeh and Shireen--their young forbidden love and the forces that work to pull them apart. Those same forces that made it impossible to produce or display a film as controversial as Circumstance in Iran.  Kehavarz assembled her cast and did the filming in Beirut, where the authenticity of the milieu remains intact.  


Grade:  A

PIRATE RADIO (R)

Richard Curtis, writer/director of Love Actually, (on my top ten favorite movies of all time list) is back, paying homage to the rock n roll revolution of the sixties and the "pirate" radio stations that broke through the British government's tight-assed policy of limiting the exposure of rock music to a couple of hours a week on the BBC. During the mid-sixties, while Americans were rockin' and boppin' to the "British Invasion" music of the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc. on the radio airwaves, the British public was literally being starved of their own music. This gave rise to the first pirate radio ship, Radio Caroline, anchored in international waters off the British coast--and others that followed--which began rocking out and giving the public what they wanted to hear. Pirate Radio is a fictionalized comedy loosely based on those historic events.

Pirate Radio grabs you right out of the gate with The Kinks blasting from the theater speakers as we're introduced to the wacky deejays that populate the ship, Radio Rock--including The Count, (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and later on Gavin, (Rhys Ifans) Britain's "greatest deejay" come to join the rebels and provide his own brand of mildly salacious banter to get Radio Rock's legions of followers stirred up. Quentin, (Bill Nighy, whom we loved in Love Actually) is the captain and head honcho who tries to ride herd on his colorful assemblage of eight distinctive personalities.

Saturdays bring boat loads of hero-worshiping female fans to the ship, who provide the sex to go along with the drugs and rock n roll. Then there's the subplot of Carl, (Tom Sturridge) Quentin's young godchild who comes aboard and comes of age as he tries to lose his virginity to the exotic Marianne, (Talulah Riley) who's more enamored with one of the deejays--even though he's ugly--because HE'S A DEEJAY!

Momentum and dramatic tension build as the staid British government attempts to shut the pirate station down and rid the airwaves of all that trashy, undignified, un-stiff upper lip music. Kenneth Branagh is annoyingly anal as Sir Alistair Dormandy, who tries every trick in the book to sink Radio Rock--eventually leading to the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967 that officially outlaws pirate radio.

There's a bunch of irrelevant silliness in the middle of Pirate Radio that completely knocks the wind out of the movie's sails at that point, slowing what had been a building momentum leading to the inevitable showdown between the pirates and the British authorities. Fortunately, though, the film picks up again and roars full speed ahead to a stirring climax and conclusion.

Pirate Radio would have gotten a higher grade from me if not for this buzz-kill in the middle, but it is what it is. The rest of the movie, however, is KICK-ASS, with an almost nonstop soundtrack of the grooviest Stones, Kinks, Hendrix, The Who, Beach Boys, Turtles, and yes--even The Seekers--setting the whole theater on the verge of breaking out and boogeying in the aisles! (And you definitely SHOULD see it in the theater.)

Some of you know that I spent decades working as a radio deejay inside and outside the continental U.S. And while Pirate Radio is played pretty much over the top, the stuff about the adoring females who worshiped (and bestowed certain types of favors upon) their radio icons during the heyday of rock n roll (as I look back fondly on those times) was NOT terribly exaggerated.

I'm still grinning from ear to ear.

GRADE: B