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The Day I Became A Woman is an Iranian film from director Marzieh Meshkini. The film is a compilation of three short stories involving women of different ages. Interestingly, this structure for the film was mandated by the fact that in Iran, a feature-length film dealing with the lack of rights for Iranian women would have been banned.The story tells of women at three stages of life. The first part centers on a young girl who, on her ninth birthday, is told that she can no longer play with boys because she is now a woman (hence the title). She is given until noon to play with her male best friend, for she was born at around noon. We observe the girl and her friend sharing a sucker through bars, symbolizing the illegality of an opposite-sex friendship. The second part is about a young woman who enters a bicycle race against the wishes of both her husband and society. As the husband and other men from the village ride beside her to convince her to return home, the race begins to symbolize a freedom from limitations that she desperately seeks.Finally, the third part of the film shows us an elderly widow who wishes to use her life savings to buy everything that she never had. She strolls through the local mall on her electric wheelchair, buying a refrigerator, oven, television, and other luxury items. As she buys more and more, the line of boys transporting her purchases grows, leading to an unexpected sight gag when we see the woman followed by a seemingly endless line of boys transporting her purchases.I absolutely loved The Day I Became A Woman. There are long periods of silence, and the film as a whole contains minimal dialogue, but it gets its point across. Instead of the bicyclist woman verbally expressing disobedience of her husband, we see her peddling harder. The film has grown and grown in my memory in the weeks since I saw it. The Day I Became A Woman educates the audience about Iran, its geography, language, people, traditions, and laws. Finally, the closing image is spectacular - metaphoric, comedic, utterly implausible, and perfect all at once. The closing image of the sea suggests that as fast and as far as Iranian women may travel, there is nowhere to go. We understand so well that they are bounded not by the sea, but by society.
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