On the face of it, the Iranian film My Favourite Cake falls into the Hollywood category of heartwarmer. A lonely widow meets-cute with a widower. They have a sweet, tender moment together back at her apartment so she can bake him her favourite cake. It’s the kind of film that shouldn’t be controversial. And yet this movie, as well as being wonderfully written and performed by its leads, Lily Farhadpour and Esmaeel Mehrabi, and very moving in showing all the late-life yearnings of two people condensed into a single evening, is the most dangerous and passionate of the year.
Its co-directors, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, have had their passports taken away by the Iranian authorities and they have been placed under house arrest, having been subject to hours of interrogation – a situation very similar to that of that other Iranian movie titan, Jafar Panahi. Last summer, the Iranian security forces raided the home of the film’s editor and seized hard drives. (Fortunately, copies of the film were also stored in Paris – that traditional home of Iranian cinema’s dissident spirit, and the bridgehead for its presence on the European festival circuit.)
The theocratic authorities took exception to shots of Mahin, the 70-year-old Iranian heroine, played by Farhadpour, drinking alcohol and dancing (in the most innocent way possible) with a man – and also of course appearing on screen with her hair uncovered. Most importantly, this woman is shown in a public park standing up to the “morality police” who drive around yelling at women without hijabs: young male bullies, intoxicated by their uniform and by the risk-free thrills of intimidating women.
This powerful and important film speaks to the current real-life situation, where 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died mysteriously in hospital after being arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol for not having the hijab, and reminds us also of the remarkable, unnamed student protester who is still under arrest with no assurances as to her health after stripping to her underwear in the street to protest against the dress code.
When I saw this film in February this year, I was utterly absorbed in its humanity and quiet strength. But it is only on revisiting it now that I can see more clearly the importance of the two leading characters being old. This doesn’t make them safe and gentle and benign as they might be assumed in another kind of western film. On the contrary. They are dangerous – because they can remember. They can remember what it was like before the theocracy arrived, in all its oppressive mediocrity. They can remember a time before the “morality police” drove around with apparently nothing better to do – in their youth, hijabs were not compulsory and they remember quite as much respectable religious feeling in those days. This is the real The Handmaid’s Tale: quiet, courageous, compelling.
