Massoud Bahkshi’s tensely potent “Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness” has the dramatic momentum to keep you enthralled but is the furthest thing from a comfortable watch. Taking place over the course of one long night, ‘Yalda,” circles the dressing room dread of a young Iranian woman named Maryam (Sadaf Asgari), who has been condemned to death for the murder of her husband Nasser, an act which Maryam vehemently maintains was an accident, though she was seen running away from the scene of the crime.
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Maryam’s last chance to be pardoned rests in the hands-on Nasser’s resentful daughter, Mona (Behnaz Jafari). The two women will be appearing on the live TV show, “Joy of Forgiveness,” one of Iran’s most television popular programs. Most of the film takes place behind the scenes of the broadcast, leading up to what is to be a heated on-air discussion of the situation surrounding Nasser’s alleged murder; Mona can than elect to forgive Maryam of the crime of killing her father, saving her life, or let her be executed.
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To make things even merrier, the decision is to be followed by a live text-in-vote, letting the country’s viewers determine whether or not reparations are to be paid to the mourning family by the studio if enough million votes are received. But in order for any of this to happen, Mona needs to show up in the first place. When the broadcast begins and the grieving party has yet to be seen, the program’s director sees no choice but to screen an old documentary, that recaps the events of Nasser’s death, in an effort to stall. Maryam maintains much of what the film says is not true and begins getting emotional about it, causing the production to question whether she is fit to be on camera and if she should be allowed to speak her piece.
Many of the questions about the purported murder revolve around Maryam’s stillborn son, Mona believing that she perhaps never loved her father, only married him for his money, and would not be upset by the prospect of an abortion. “I died when my son died,” Maryam maintains, having lost everything. What starts like a much more life and death version of an Iranian Sidney Lumet film, using the urgency of a backstage, real-time dramatic sizzler like “Steve Jobs,” turns even more sensationalist about halfway through, as a couple that spends the early part of the film trying to get into the studio’s back rooms unveils a secret that flips the story on its head.
Bahkshi’s film is undeniably powerful but veers close to cynical at times, dealing with the incredibly hefty subject matter in both a very direct and far from subtle, veiled way that is only moderately successful. There’s too much heavy melodrama introduced late in the game, and the movie has a dynamically mismatched finale that needlessly heightens the stakes to make up for not developing the character of Mona as much as it could have. In fact, a couple of the show’s production staff, with significantly less screen time, leave a more lasting impression. One gag involves a feeble elderly gentleman bringing crew members and shows guests tea, no one remarking on the ableist irony.
In the end, the almost “American Idol”-esque media approach that ‘Yalda’ elects to take can’t capture the gutting emotional truth of Maryam’s horrible situation in the same way as a film like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness,” a similarly titled documentary about a young woman who survives an honor killing and examines the various fallout effects the event has in harrowing ways. There’s a strange paparazzi snapshot effect that used to heighten the media angle, but it’s a stylistic toe dip that doesn’t mesh well with the material. ‘Yalda’s’ realist aesthetic slowly loses ground to more scandalous genre trappings that overtake the narrative, but do add a bit of narrative spice.
The film’s bold method of addressing themes of maternal sacrifice, and what determines both legal and religious rights in a country where the Western concept of feminism is inherently offensive is admirable, but the script swerves too much considering its otherwise singular focus. It leans a bit heavy into big swing emotional moments and has a few shouting matches too many, but Asgari gives an absolutely tremendous performance that hits like a wrecking ball and may make even the most stone-hearted tear up. [B-]
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