Two Women

Marie and I both watched Two Women for our upcoming presentation on Iran. I'll be viewing another video as well, but I watched this movie so Marie and I could discuss it and because I thought it looked good and because we think some of you may watch it!

Two Women was released in 1998 and was written and directed by Tahmineh Milani, who is also responsible for several other films. The movie takes place in the late 1970s and 1980s (a 13 year span is covered).

Two Women has several important characters:

1). Fereshteh (main character)

2). Roya

3). Hassan

4). Fereshteh's uncle and male cousin

5). Fereshteh's father

6). Ahmad (Fereshteh's husband)

7). Roya's husband

At the film's outset we see Roya, a woman who owns an architecture firm with her husband. Roya is confident and has the respect of her workers. Her relationship with her husband is shown to be one of mutual respect, one that represents a partnership in life.

We then flash back to Roya's university days in Tehran. She meets a classmate named Fereshteh, who is very smart and tutors Roya. The two women become very good friends. While both women are independent (think for themselves, live alone, attend university, come and go as they please), we begin to see Fereshteh as the more bold of the friends. When something dangerous happens at the university she wants to stop and see what it is. When she is confronted by Hassan, her stalker, she goes up to him and yells at him even though she is scared and knows he is dangerous. She refuses to stay in her apartment and hide from Hassan.

This is where Milani's portrayal of men begins to play a larger role. Hassan follows Fereshteh everywhere she goes and gets on the bus with her multiple times. In Tehran, when Fereshteh and Roya (who are on the bus together) tell the driver they are being harassed, the driver and other men help them. The driver throws Hassan off the bus, calls him names, and tells him to leave the girls alone. As Fereshteh looks out the window, she sees Hassan holding a knife and looking at her. Hassan's terrorization of Fereshteh continues in Tehran until he disfigures her male cousin with acid. (See Marie's post for more details.)

In the hospital (after the acid), Fereshteh's uncle and father (brothers) are both present. Fereshteh's father blames her and says that she has dishonored her family. Fereshteh's uncle tries to tell his brother that it is not Fereshteh's fault and that she needs help and comfort. This exchange highlights how two different regions in Iran may be predisposed to thinking of women. These two brothers, presumably raised together, have different views. Fereshteh's uncle, living in Tehran, allows his son to be tutored by a woman and understands, even through his grief, that she is not to blame for the tragedy that befell his son. Fereshteh's father, who still lives in a small town, blames his daughter as if she threw the acid herself, he feels that she is directly responsible for this, that she has dishonored and embarrassed her family, and that she has had too much freedom and must come home.

Back home, Fereshteh is sad but feels safe. Until she uses a public phone and sees Hassan watching her. She gets in her car and a chase ensues in which a little boy dies. Fereshteh's father is again upset and blames her. At the trial, Hassan blames Fereshteh for everything he's being charged with (stalking, acid throwing, killing the little boy). He says it's all her fault because she didn't love him and she made him feel foolish for being in love with her, that he still loves her (you didn't miss anything, these two never date, he just sees her and wants her) and that she mocks him by denying him. He is sentenced to 13 years in prison. He says, as he being hauled away, that he'll find Fereshteh.

Fereshteh, too was on trial. A man named Ahmad paid her expenses in exchange for her hand in marriage (for more details see Marie's post on this). Though her family tried to guilt her into marriage, though she felt she owed Ahmad, Fereshteh chose to marry Ahmad. No one forced her to do so.

After their marriage, we see Ahmad become controlling and jealous of Fereshteh. He won't let anyone see her, he locks up the phone, he forbids her to leave the house, he will not allow her to go back to university. Fereshteh tries to deal with this at first, tries to reason with Ahmad. But the treatment escalates to the point that Fereshteh's father even gets upset with Ahmad, telling him "I gave you a wife, not a slave."

This is the beginning of the real development of Fereshteh's father. He is seeing first hand the psychological ramifications this marriage is having on his daughter. He is beginning to understand that there are things occurring around Fereshteh for which she is not responsible.
Fereshteh convinces her father to help her get a divorce, which is not granted. That he even agreed, though, shows monumental growth on the part of Fereshteh's father.

Years later, when Hassan gets out of prison, he finds Fereshteh. When she is fleeing Ahmad, Hassan catches up with her and she begs for death. Ahmad catches up to Fereshteh and tries to stop Hassan, then Hassan stabs Ahmad.

We are then brought back to a scene with Roya and her husband. Again, we see the loving, respectful couple. When Fereshteh questions how she'll live if Ahmad dies, it is Roya's husband who tells her "you'll live."

These male characters are all representations of stereotypes and of the progression of women's lives in Iran.

Hassan, the man who would have complete control, who would disfigure and kill a woman who disobeyed him, who is psychotic and obsessive.

Ahmad, the man who does not respect his wife, who needs control and is suspicious and wears away a woman's self esteem, tries to take away the freedom she had and wants back, but never physically abuses her.

Fereshteh's uncle, who shows progress from the old way of thinking (which he probably shared with his brother) to a more liberated view where smart, independent women are not intimidating and unnatural.

Fereshteh's father, who shows that a man can change. His character's progression toward a point of view that values Fereshteh from one that blames her shows that progress does not have to happen from generation to generation, it can occur within a person.

Roya's husband, who epitomizes what is lacking in the life of the repressed who have no recourse because laws are created to keep them "in their places": mutual respect, genuine love, no contest to independence, partnership.

Milani sets this movie in the late 1970s and 1980s for a very specific reason. Not only does Milani show that there many kinds of men in Iran, just as there here in the U.S. and around the world, she shows that there are men who do not treat women poorly just because laws allow them to. She shows that there is a progression taking place (Fereshteh's father, uncle, cousin, Roya's husband). If that progression was occurring in the 1970s and continued after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, what kind of men and relationships must there now exist in Iran?

While both main female characters are strong, independent, and smart, the point of Two Women is largely about showing Iranian men, the Iranian society, as something that is not barbaric and void of respect for women. By using characters like Hassan and Ahmad, Milani shows her awareness that some change is needed, that women are not treated as equals. She makes a stellar case against the mistreatment of women. But she also does a stellar job at devillainizing Iranian men by showing that they are not all like Hassan and Ahmad and that even those who share some characteristics with them can change.