Amen, (Mehri Kazemi) is an Iranian transgender teenager, who has moved to Tehran from a small town, and is looking to transition to a woman. Amen is introduced to Naser, (the very handsome Madhi Pakdel), a wealthy man, who offers to pay for Amen’s gender reassignment surgery. He needs one simple favor in return. Since Amen sounds remarkably like Naser’s daughter Annie, all Amen needs to do is pretend to be Annie for Naser’s blind mother so he can inherit her estate. Amen cautiously agrees to the strange request and moves into Nasar’s luxurious house in Tehran with him and his weird silent bodyguard. Her suspicion grows as the days go by and Amen’s questions continue to go unanswered. She is increasingly not in control of her situation and it emerges that Naser’s generosity comes at a very high price.
Iran is the perfect setting for this film. Despite Iran’s rigid attitudes toward sexuality, its capital, Tehran, has been dubbed one of the world’s hubs for sex-reassignment surgery. Thanks to local Iranian transgender activism, transgender individuals live and work with no legal barriers in the country. The government even helps with the costs of hormone medicine and gender reassignment surgery for those who want it. Some say this government support is really there to encourage gay men to transition to women as the Iranian government is so homophobic. Iran is of course not a utopia for the trans community, and violence and prejudice remain as high there as elsewhere in the world.
Directors and co-writers Mehdi and Mohammad Torab-Beigi employ unusual and very effective camera-work whereby the camera presents Amen’s point of view for the entire running time. Her role is performed completely as a voiceover, Kazemi nonetheless delivering a full character performance. We feel as though we are in Amen’s very vulnerable shoes, falling deeper and deeper into very unusual situations and having to make very tough decisions. Bleak, pale cinematography is complemented by a beautiful, haunting soundtrack. The plot is very cleverly drip-fed to us throughout the movie, keeping us in suspense throughout. The Torab-Beigi’s cleverly use the movie to show how we are all constrained to some extent by our bodies, homes, borders, society, prisons etc. Another theme is the exploitation of the vulnerable by the rich. The movie is also a great, very unsettling, exercise for us to imagine being transexual in a country like Iran and desperately wanting gender reassignment surgery. How far would you go to live your true life?
Review: Ris Fatah Queerguru’s newest contributor (when he can be bothered) is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
