The romantic encounter between a lonely widow and a cab driver, both of them 70 and with no emotional ties to hold them back, might seem like a trivial subject for Berlin competition, where there is no shortage of heavy dramas and weighty subject matter. Except that My Favourite Cake (Keyke mahboobe man) is an Iranian film and it quietly describes, with a large dose of humor and empathy, how untrue it is to imagine that the older generation isn’t affected by institutions like Iran’s Morality Police and other limitations to their personal freedom.
Meanwhile, writer-directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha will not be in Berlin to support their film. The Iranian authorities have banned them from traveling, confiscated their passports and are proposing a court trial related to their work as filmmakers and artists. Of little avail was a plea and protest issued by the Berlinale – “a festival fundamentally committed to freedom of speech [and] expression” – in securing their attendance.
Certainly, compared to the outspoken opposition films of jailed filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Mohamad Rasoulof, to name two of Iran’s most prominent directors, My Favourite Cake is a subtler taste. But its point of view is no less clear for that.
This is the second feature co-directed by Moghaddam and Sanaeeha after Ballad of a White Cow (2021), the drama of a young widow who discovers her husband was wrongfully executed, much in the modern tradition of guilt and retribution dramas. Cake, instead, vaunts good spirits, deceptively simple characters and an easy flow of story-telling that international audiences should find relatable and enjoyable, and not just the older matinee crowd.
Its cast of frank-speaking septuagenarians is already a revolutionary choice. Ready to break every rule in the book when necessary, Mahin (the wonderful, extremely natural Lily Farhadpour) brings the same fearless approach to her life as does a young woman she meets in the park. Mahin’s energetic protest to a policeman saves the girl from being arrested for wearing her hijab improperly and showing too much hair, the same charge slapped on young Mahsa Amini, whose 2022 death in police custody was a spark for the women’s rights movement in Iran. As the paddy wagon drives off, the rescued girl, who was arrested twice before, throws herself in the arms of her boyfriend and defiantly walks away. For Mahin the choice of freedom is also instinctive, but not so simple.
For one thing, she has lived alone since her husband died thirty years back and her daughter and her family moved abroad. Her home is classic old Tehran: large and airy with a big garden which she tends with love, and she seems reconciled to inhabiting it on her own. Not that she doesn’t have a circle of friends her age. In a warm, humorously-written early scene, we see a table full of powdered and coiffed elderly ladies exchanging spirited banter at Mahin’s house, giving the surprising impression that, apart from their personal collection of illnesses, operations and meds, they are still interested in men. One woman describes how she was picked up by a strange gentleman in a white car at the market and driven home. It gets Mahin thinking.
From the uncertain way she puts on makeup, it is apparent this is something she hasn’t done recently. She takes a taxi to Tehran’s old Hyatt hotel, remembering its long-ago glamour and the music and dancing it once hosted before the revolution. Today it is brightly lit and empty, and the name has been changed to the Freedom Grand Hotel. Depressingly, elegant dresses with low necklines have disappeared; in their place, Mahin notes with chagrin, hijabs and sneakers are the order of the day.
Her various attempts to meet a single man seem destined to fail, until she stops in a pensioners’ restaurant for lunch to spend some of her government meal vouchers. It is there she spots the wiry, wifeless taxi driver Faramarz, played with the same cheerful, ready-for-anything naturalness by veteran actor Esmail Mehrabi.
One of Mahin’s most endearing traits is her courage in all situations. There is nothing timid or submissive about her as she follows him to the dispatcher’s stand and waits for a chance to introduce herself and invite him over. Her boldness pays off, even as the filmmakers strew dire threats that the neighbors will turn them in to the Morality Police. But at their age, what can happen to them? It will end in the most unexpected way possible, in a magical evening filled with laughter, bootleg wine, music and dancing that makes the heart soar and rejoice along with these two delightful characters who somehow seem to have beaten the system. But have they? Followed by Henrik Nagy’s lovely score full of period songs, one leaves the movie reflecting on the real limits placed on the final years of one’s life.
Director, screenwriters: Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha
Producers: Gholamreza Mousavi, Behtash Sanaeeha, Etienne de Ricaud, Peter Krupenin, Christopher Zitterbart
Cast: Lily Farhadpour, Esmail Mehrabi
Cinematography: Mohammad Haddadi
Production and costume design: Maryam Moghaddam, Amir Hivand
Editing: Ata Mehrad, Behtash Sanaeeha, Ricardo Saraiva
Music: Henrik Nagy
Sound design: Hossein Ghoorchian
Sound: Abdolreza Heydari, Iman Baziyar
Production companies: Filmsazan Javan (Tehran), Caractères (France), Hobab (Sweden), Watchmen Productions (Germany)
World sales: Totem Films (Paris)
In Farsi
97 minutes
