The Girl in the Sneakers

Wistful, very pretty film about a young teenage girl who is interrogated or questioned about having been seen in a park with a guy and exchanging phone numbers.

First she is asked if he asked for his number and responds that she asked for his, and she had to go through the questions with her parents present who were sticking up for her, saying that she never says things like the things she was accused of. She begins a journey around Tehran from the luxurious orchards in the north of the city uptown to the quarters of the people there in other parts who have sort of come to dead ends of their lives.

The film finds its power in the sometimes brutal portrayal of life on the streets, and the role of women. Very avante garde and poetic, we all relate to the main character's coming of age story. Recommended...

Aryan Somers

This movie makes you appreciate where we live but at the same time, it makes you think about other cultures. The production of this film makes you think of a high school/home movie but the message is clear. No matter what country you live in or what your culture is, there is always something in common and that's people need to be themselves.

a young girl who is in her teens is plagued by the realities and expectations of her life. living in what is assumed to be a middle class lifestyle, she is arrested in the beginning of the film because she is seen by police walking with a boy and talking to him in the park who is unrelated to her. this type of casual contact among the sexes is not acceptable. the parents are notified and after being examined and confirmed that she is still a virgin, the carges are dropped, and she is sent home with her parents. distraught and depressed by her life she skips school the following day and plans to run away. she wanders around tehran and bumps into all sorts of people. in a state of ignorance and being overtrusting that people are geniunly good and will understand her plight, she starts to realize that her situation is really not that bad. one man she encounters appears to console and defend her plight, then trying to take her home, she realizes he is out for his own interests. she meets a homeless woman and her son, and feels sympothetic to their situation, and joins them, but becomming fearful as night falls, she becomes unable to rest either alone or among the homeless camp of people she is introduced to by the woman she has met. she finds that people are desperate and how gone to terrible lengths to survive. throughout the entire film, in between her wandering and meeting people, she is constantly at a phone booth trying to reach the boy she was with in the beginning of the film. she beleives he will come meet her and they will run off together. as midnight approaches and she is just about fed up and reached her endurance of the street life, she finally finds the boy she is waiting for has appeared, but the movie doesnt end happily.

if you are not used to iranian film you will find the movie to be without a sense of direction. it is more symbolic, and my take is that, things arent as bad as they seem, there are others worse than you, sometimes when trying for better and a fairytale, you get a worse taste of life than you had...that type of meaning.. i enjoyed this film, but i also enjoy iranian films for their more meaningful and simple direction. the movie is farsi spoken with subtitles in english.

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