Elderly, overweight and alone, Mahin (Lili Farhadpour) sleeps until noon, her boredom and isolation palpable. Yet this apparently lonely 70-year-old widow is not as sad a figure as the opening scenes of My Favourite Cake suggest. Directed by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha (who were prevented from leaving Iran when the film premiered in Berlin last year), this is no sorry tale of lonely old age, at least not entirely.
Mahin is a retired nurse on the outskirts of Teheran, widowed for 30 years and with no desire to remarry. Mahin reminisces about the before-times, when she would go to the Hyatt Hotel (ironically now renamed the Freedom Hotel) wearing ‘high heels and plunging necklines’. She also recalls that she and her friends find it harder to meet: weekly get-togethers are now annual, while other activities have had to be renounced.
If that all sounds a little joyless, Mahin eats what she wants, goes to bed when she likes, spends her evenings watching trashy soap operas and enjoys the sanctity of her beautiful back yard, a private Eden that is lush, vibrant and colourful. The garden represents the interior lives of Iranian people that have to be locked away and hidden from the outer world. When she has her gang of ‘old gals’ over for a party, they discuss the pros and cons of marrying and for the most part prefer their independence and freedom. Yet the conversation with her girlfriends has stirred something in Mahin that has lain dormant for years. So she goes in search of a man and sets her sights on a taxi driver, Faramaz (Esmaeel Mehrabi).
The directors, like their protagonist, do not shy away from standing up to the authorities. When Mahin goes walking in the park, she fearlessly intervenes when the police try to arrest some young women. Later, when she and Faramaz are dancing to loud music, he worries about what the morality police will do if they come knocking, to which Mahin responds: ‘What can they do us? They’ll force us to marry!’ Rather than fearing them, she ridicules them.
It is wonderful to see the two tipsy protagonists coming together and anyone not rooting for them and their burgeoning love story must have a heart of pure cold ice. Not only are they navigating a new intimate relationship, they are doing so decades after their previous relationships and when they are both in their eighth decade. Getting naked, getting close, baring so much after so long, is hard. Despite the couple’s insecurities, the film contains one of the best shower scenes I’ve seen. The tenderness, humour, easy openness and pure joy emanating from the neophyte lovers is a wonder to behold and their instant mutual falling in love is a wonderfully defiant act against the absurd horror of their country’s regime and against the passing of the years.
