My Favourite Cake

(کیک محبوب من,
Keyk-e mahbub-e man)

dirs. Maryam Moghaddam & Behtash Sanaeeha

2024

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I’m not even sure what my favourite cake would be, but I don’t think you’ll be surprised if I lead with the fact that this flick is probably, despite its title, not about cake or cakes in general.

It’s about contemporary life in Tehran under the regime, and how depressing it is, independent of how life for a widow or widower can be sad or lonely without enough to keep you occupied in between cakes. And it’s not just the matter of community expectations, or conservative cultural morays, or of the actual literal Morality Police who patrol the streets and kill women for allowing their hair to be visible.

Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) remembers the city before the revolution. She remembers how people partied, and danced, and sang. But that was so long ago. She also remembers when her husband was alive, which was also a long time ago, thirty years to be precise. Her children have grown up, and fled this totalitarian nightmare, and she is alone. Alone, bored, lonely, craving human contact and perhaps human touch. She has trouble sleeping so naturally stays up late into the night watching trashy romantic dramas, and then sleeps in until noon, most days.

She still has some friends (alive). All women, obviously, since friendship or contact with a non-relative male would probably get you arrested at the very least. And they are all widows too, who get together and nostalgise in between complaining about their physical ailments.

Being 70, her freedom is a little bit physically limited, but the bigger limitations are ever present, and invisible, except when characters choose to make themselves emblematic, and then those limitations become more literal. She hears conflict, when having visited a park, of a girl being harassed by the Morality Police, who are trying to drag her into a van because she’s not wearing her hijab properly. She fearlessly pushes back at one of the MoPos, telling him how dare he pick on innocent women for no good reason, and doesn’t he have a mother himself, how would she feel if she saw him brutalising women?

His retort is “ah, you must be one of these women that provokes the Morality Police and then get someone else to film it on their phones, and then post it to social media”, which must be a very standard response, and you’d have to think the perfect retort would be “We didn’t make you dumb goons kill Mahsa Jina Amini, you clods did that all on your lonesome”, and all that followed in the Woman Life Freedom protests that ensued.

It makes me, unfortunately, think of the old phrase “the beatings will continue until morale improves”, a process which started just after the revolution, and doesn’t seem like it’s ever likely to end under this despotic regime.

And it’s funny (it’s not funny at all) that now these directors, and the actors, are in danger of being jailed or worse for making this flick, accused of all sorts of nonsense by the regime, and of being tools of outside influence, in the pay of American masters etc.

It’s as if they constantly re-forget that no-one hates and seeks to destroy the Iranian people more so than the Iranian regime.

She somehow saves the girl, and encourages her to push back against these bullies in future, having only late in life realised that what they want is timidity and obedience, and what they can’t handle is people pushing back on them and standing up to them.

And yet, walking with the girl a little ways, she finds out she’s meeting her boyfriend, like that wouldn’t get both of them beaten half to death and thrown in jail. I swear, the youth of today…

Seemingly emboldened by her experiences, Mahin finds a place where old guys hang out, finds an old guy, Faramarz (Esmail Mehrabi), and then stalks him a little bit, before inviting him back to her place for a chat, maybe something to eat?

This part of the film is so cheeky, so sweet and so adorable that I’m almost hesitant to pick it apart or refer to specific moments or even to try too hard to grasp what it is that makes this part of the film so special. Mahin, for the first time in decades, seemingly, gets to be flirtatious, joyful, coy, but also has someone to look after, feed, care for, having made for him her favourite cake. They even drink together, some wine that a friend of hers brought over (made and enjoyed in secret) once many years ago.

Their playful banter encompasses not only the unbelievable nature of the moment they’re sharing, but also constant reminders of their pasts brought up into the present, as when Faramarz looks at photos from Mahin’s honeymoon on the beaches of the Caspian Sea and says it’s like he remembers being there himself.

He wasn’t there, but it’s like their memories are melding, their pasts smushing together, despite having lived completely different lives. Is this occurring because they’re both lightweights, in their 70s, and can’t really handle their booze in a country where possessing or drinking alcohol is a punishable offence, with the penalties including public lashings, imprisonment, and of course, execution? Maybe, but it’s also of a piece with the joyful night they’re spending together – where no matter the strictures of the looming regime, or the fact that her neighbours are snitches and narcs, for one night none of that matters, and time itself becomes circular, so they can party like it’s 1978.

Music…it’s funny how it triggers joy in people. When people outside of Iran talk about liking or preferring “old” music, they’re not talking about Mozart or Beethoven; they’re talking about their nostalgia for the music of their youth, usually. But I think in this instance, as was the case in Panah Panahi’s Hit the Road, as the family on that road trip sang their hearts out, their hunger is for the songs from before the revolution. Those songs touch their hearts and speak to their lived in passions. Not so much the music approved and allowed by The Regime.

Okay, so everything is rolling along nicely, and we might be laughing or crying along with these lovely people, and then there is the last fifteen minutes of the film. The last part of the film is nothing like the preceding 75 minutes.

This is why we can’t have nice things. They wanted to feel freedom and joy for a night, and then look what happened. I’m not going to spoil what actually happens, but I will imply that it’s not an external intrusion, it’s not the brutal state intruding on their fun, or the meddlesome neighbours. I choose, I prefer to think of it more in terms of it being more of a symbolic ending rather than a literal one (even though I’m not saying in any way that what happens is figurative or allegorical rather than literal, because it’s pretty depressingly “real”). What I’m saying is that for me it delivered an ending that essentially says that living under this inhuman regime means that, to survive, you have to take your passion, your life, and bury it. And if that keeps you alive, yet you live without “life”, so to speak, what’s the fucking point?

I’m making this film sound so serious, and it really isn’t until that shock ending (which is somewhat foreshadowed, in that there are signs). There is also an element which plays into the ending that I’m deliberately not referring to. And it’s not about whether the passion these oldies experience is sexual, as well as all the other elements that are in play. I mean, of course it is, but you could never make such a film. The Ayatollah himself would kill you if you made such a film. There are limits.

But what I’m referring to changes slightly the nature of what this night meant for Mahin and Faramarz. For her it was a night where she cast aside her fears and tried to really connect with someone, after living without for so long. For Faramarz, it might have meant something slightly different. He still seems pretty happy, but again, that unspoken element, the readiness with which he procured a certain something-something, implies that this might not have been his first, late in life rodeo. As a taxi driver he might have met other women like Mahin, who took one look at his white walrus moustache and his complete absence of an arse and thought “fuck it, why not risk it all for a night?”, an option that would not have presented itself with as much ease for her.

Maybe it comes down to perspective, as well, since this film is from her perspective, primarily, and so it should be. It’s what she risks, what she fears, what she transcends, and what penalty the universe makes her pay.

I continue to be blown the fuck away by Iranian cinema, and by these flicks which are crossing the line more and more often. It’s now less of a dare and more of a desperate challenge to the regime, which keeps thinking that if it keeps beating up protestors and executing everyone and jailing film directors then everything will go back to normal and a pacified populace will keep obeying and worshipping the terrible regime that oppresses them with such depravity on the daily.

But somehow there is still hope that things will change, must change, somehow…

8 times it’s probably cheesecake, to be honest, out of 10

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“This is freedom?” – Is this Desire? - My Favourite Cake