Sadaf Foroughi returns to Iran to shoot her second feature Summer with Hope (Tabestan Ba Omid), reprising the theme of teenage rebellion against an oppressive society and controlling adults. Like the main character in her well-received first feature Ava, here the 17-year-old only son Omid struggles to get some breathing room away from his possessive mother, his uncle, his estranged father and a host of other authority figures and busybodies, until misunderstanding leads to disaster. Though the narrative spins its wheels repetitiously in the early scenes and the story takes a long time to get going, it gets into gear and becomes engrossing midway through, when the boy’s summer on the beach turns into a life-changing nightmare. The film made its world premiere in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe competition.
Interestingly, Foroughi sets the action in a wealthy residential complex on the Caspian sea full of privileged homeowners and their spoiled kids. When Omid (Mahdi Ghorbani) and his mother Leili (Leili Rashidi, who played the martinet headmistress in Ava) drive up from Tehran, they find their villa flooded: it is so close to the beach that storm waves have gotten through the doors and windows. The raging sea is a frequent motif in the film, made even more threatening by Amin Jafari’s moody cinematography which creates an atmosphere of foreboding and menace.
The first crisis, however, is a banal tug-of-war with the head coach of the swimming team at an exclusive sports club in the complex. Omid is a top swimmer who was invited to participate in qualifiers for the national championships, but to everyone’s dismay, his application is not in order. Leili and her nagging architect brother Saadi (Alireza Kamali) pull strings and exert all the pressure they can to change the coach’s mind. A little bizarrely, the coach seems to have an interest in the soon-to-be-divorced Leili, but not even this does the trick. And in one of those impossible Iranian complications that would have been better left out, Omid’s father has linked his son’s winning the meet to him granting mom a divorce. So the tall boy with an athletic torso can truthfully say, “Our lives depend on this competition!”
On his own, Omid has been secretly training with the coach’s young assistant Mani (Benyamin Peyrovani) and the two have become fast friends. If he can’t race in the swimming pool where he is unmatched, Mani says, he can take part in a race in the open sea where he is inexperienced, an idea that will raise red flags with any audience who has seen how recklessly Omid borrows mom’s car and drives it over the sand dunes in the dark – all without a license. Danger seems to be his middle name, and a cocky 17-year-old is ready to face all challenges.
Elements of violence have been awkwardly foreshadowed early on when a neighbor tells the family he wants to sell his house. Why? Because his daughters were accosted by two strange men on the street and he feels the gated community isn’t safe anymore. Omid is aware of the shadowy strangers, but he doesn’t know what a violent role they will play in his own story.
One night the boys overstay their training at the sports complex and a security guard catches at least one of them in the shower. They manage to escape separately without being identified in an exciting night scene, but Omid loses his backpack in the process and has to go back for it. Though the shower scene, which is not shown but can be imagined, fades into the background, uncle Saadi has got wind of Omid’s friendship with the poor, dark-skinned assistant coach and either out of class snobbery, racism or homophobic imaginings, he determines to separate them. Much later, when it’s too late, Mani’s wife and daughter make their appearance, with the tearful woman protesting, “My husband is not a pervert.”
The final scenes are frustrating in their deliberate ambiguity, as if that was necessary in this kind of moral drama. Though we may never know for sure who did what to whom (and some of the possibilities are enticing), it’s very clear that Ghorbani’s Omid is one screwed-up young man with a lot on his conscience. As his mom, Rashidi uses her feminine, high-pitched voice to dominate every conversation; Kamali give uncle Saadi a weak, emotional side that makes a lot of sense for the character he’s playing.
Director, screenplay, production design: Sadaf Foroughi
Cast: Leili Rashidi, Mahdi Ghorbani, Alireza Kamali, Benyamin Peyrovani, Kiarash Anvari, Milad Mirzaei, Sanaz Najafi
Producers: Sadaf Foroughi, Kiarash Anvari, Christine Piovesan
Executive producer: Emily Kulasa
Cinematography: Amin Jafari
Editing: Kiarash Anvari
Music: Soheil Peyghambari
Sound: Serkan Koseoglu
Production companies: First Generation Films (Canada), Sweet Delight Pictures (Canada)
Venue: KVIFF Film Festival (Crystal Globe competition)
In Farsi
99 minutes
