Here Without Me

Bahram Tavakkoli's 2011 Iranian film is adapted from Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie. A mother lives in a small flat with her two children; the son works in a warehouse and the daughter almost never leaves the house. The adaptation moves the events to Tehran and keeps the structure of the play. What the mother tells of her earlier life, the son's wish to escape and the small objects the daughter collects all serve the same function; the scene of the expected visitor is the film's breaking point. Fatemeh Motamed-Arya plays the mother and Saber Abar the son. The space is narrow and the light continuously low; the narrative almost never shows the outside, and that enclosure comes from the play itself. Who it's for: those who like theatrical adaptation and Iranian family drama. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a mobile narrative; the film is three people circling in the same room.