One from the Vaults

There's a new Iranian documentary out from Facets about poet, rebel, and one-time filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad, but I'm warning you: It's a baffling mix of interviews with her mischievous elderly mother, recitations of her most erotic poetry, and—no, I can't explain it—propagandistic war footage that seems to align Farrokhzad, who died young in a tragic car crash, with martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. At least I think that's what's going on. It's called Mirror of the Soul, but you probably need a degree in Persian studies to decipher it.

Farrokhzad's short 1963 documentary, The House Is Black, has been read as an oblique critique of the shah's regime, but it's far too humanist for propaganda. Over images of a desolate leper colony in Azerbaijan, the voiceover alternates between a male doctor, who drily names the characteristics of leprosy, and Farrokhzad, who reads a poem in a swaying, incantatory voice. The editing (also by Farrokhzad) is superbly rhythmic and surprising. But what's most amazing about the film is the way it teeters between irony—the patients recite prayers thanking God for their hands as the camera roves over their curled fingers and blotchy stumps—and headlong effusions of sentiment. It's one of my favorite Iranian films.

One from the Checkout Line

The children in Little Children are like aliens. They may be in this world, but they are not of it. With their tiny heads and big eyes, they stare and jut their imperceptible hips and fixate passionately on such objects as plush jester's hats and light-addled moths. The kids in question belong to Sarah (a rumpled, lovely Kate Winslet) and Brad (Patrick Wilson), two stay-at-home parents who chance to meet at a suburban playground. Sarah is sitting apart from the other mothers, attempting—according to the intrusive narration—to survey them like an anthropologist among the natives. Brad is pushing his kid on a swing when Sarah approaches. She wants to make the other mothers jealous, she explains. She gets his phone number. Then they kiss.

Against the backdrop of their quickly feverish, sun-dappled affair, a pedophile named Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) moves into his mother's house nearby. Mass hysteria blooms. The sympathetic (if childish) drive for pleasure that leads Brad and Sarah into each other's arms holds no such rewards for Ronnie. To say that he is the first sympathetic pedophile in the movies would be stretching it a little—for one thing, Haley, a former child actor, is now ugly as sin. But Ronnie is pitiable, and his mother still loves him, and those paltry scraps contain all the makings of tragedy.