Azadeh Moaveni

It is a rare movie that puts me to sleep twice. I first went to see The Day I Became a Woman in Tehran when it debuted, and promptly snoozed off during the interminable, irritating first segment of the triptych. I attempted the film once again last week, having forgotten in the intervening years just how disappointing and soporific it was. I’ve been perpetually meaning to write a long piece about how such films — produced with the naked and sole objective of getting attention at internatinal film festivals — are viewed in Iran, but all the wars and political turmoil conspire to get in my way. Visually, this film is gorgeous, and I think Ms. Meshkini would have done well to have produced some sort of photography exhibit of stills rather than a feature film. The Tehran cinema where I saw it the first time around was nearly empty, and the group of Iranians I watched it with last week uniformly suggested we watch a Bollywood film instead. Composed with the icy precision of an interior decorator, The Day I Became a Woman captures scarcely anything of contemporary Iranian reality, and is a jumble of exotic scenes designed for the European palate. Snore. One should stick to Kiarostami, va salam.