Shot by shot Ava is alive with invention. It isn’t merely that this Iranian-Canadian film avoids the facile payoff of the reaction shot; writer-director Sadaf Foroughi has thought through this remarkable debut, meshing form and content with a seamlessness that’ll make cinephiles draw breaths. This depiction of how a Tehran teenager squirms under the fierce gaze of a strict mother and an absent father is one of 2018’s most poignant films.
Mahour Jabbari plays the title character, a violinist of modest talents in her spare time who butts head with her mother Bahar (Bahar Noohian) as most adolescents do, even ones whose parents don’t follow strict religio-cultural guidelines in which appearances are reality. A doctor by trade, Bahar is alarmed when Ava thinks she has a future as a musician. Then she spends way too much time with Melody (Shayesteh Saadi), whom Bahar considers too active a symbol of rebellion. But what sets Bahar off and leads to the film’s chilling conclusion is when Ava, perhaps on a whim, develops an interest in fellow musician Nima (Houman Hoursan). Although nothing happens between them besides long walks — it’s not even clear Ava likes Nima except as a experiment on her feelings — what ensues is enough to horrify Bahar. As punishment she drags Ava to a gynecologist. Ava’s school principal Mrs. Dehkhoda (Leili Rashid) also gets in on the act, one of those awful people whom almost every kid in an educational institution has dealt with: the administrator who plays students off each other so that the school becomes a miscellany of snitches. “The stricter you are, the more distant she gets,” Ava’s kindly ineffectual father (Vahid Aghapoor) warns his wife, correctly, for Bahar coaxes out and steels Ava’s recalcitrance.
Distance is Foroughi’s aesthetic approach; her editing and shooting choices shun bathos. For most of its running time, Sina Kermanizadeh’s camera is reluctant to focus on faces. A peephole shot watches Ava as she packs her violin, suggesting how implicated these lessons are with her developing sexuality. On the phone, photographed waist down, Foroughi forces us to listen to the conversational pauses, to feel the nerves a-tremble. Often seen in profile or through refractive surfaces like mirrors, bedroom and rearview and otherwise, Ava and Bahar come off as performers for an audience of one. This goes double for Mrs. Dehkhoda, the film’s closest approximation of a sinister force. Situating her in the frame behind desks, Foroughi emphasizes her implacability. When discussing her contempt for the so-called terrible things that girls do by themselves in the bathrooms, she doesn’t even sound turned on; she could be reciting from a list of grain statistics.
Thanks to the secret of the teenager’s parentage, treated as one more fact instead of revelation but which I will not spoil, Ava doesn’t force Western audiences to set up judgment on the purported liberties their children enjoy. Foroughi instead directs one of the more lacerating depictions of the mother-daughter relationship in modern film; love is the oxygen for the hate. When she at last shoots Jabbari in closeup she’s a compelling presence. At times resembling a young Debra Winger, Jabbari can also drain her face of emotion, leaving a mask of forbearance or suffering, depending on the circumstances. When Ava reaches its conclusion, there’s some doubt about whether an act of independence is enough to break the circle of violence. Perhaps all it takes is walking away. Figure out the rest later.
GRADE: A-
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