Practical melodrama: from recognition to action in Tahmineh Milani's Fereshteh trilogy

Abstract

Since the mid 1990s much scholarly and critical attention has been paid to Iranian art cinema, yet scholars have largely ignored the many genre films produced in Iran each year. Tahmineh Milani is one of Iran's most prominent female filmmakers who works primarily in the genres of melodrama and comedy. This essay addresses three of Milani's melodramas, known as the Fereshteh trilogy: Two Women (1999), The Hidden Half (2001) and The Fifth Reaction (2003). Drawing upon international feminist discourses on film melodrama as well as research into the history of Iranian women's movements, I argue that in these films Milani uses melodramatic as a practical strategy to examine the impact of public events on the private lives of Iranian women. In Iran, where films are subject to severe censorship, melodrama serves as an important vehicle for expressing figuratively that which cannot be said within the allowable codes of state-controlled discourse. Through melodrama, Milani effectively reveals the underlying social, political and cultural causes of women's oppression, and in doing so attempts to bring the ‘hidden halves’ of women's lives – their experiences and emotions – into the open, into the public sphere, making them knowable and familiar.