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The film benefits from a kind of no-frills authenticity: the debates our heroine off-handedly engages in—with her son, a prostitute, a female friend, others—seem utterly real, the sort of shoptalk that real people occupy themselves with while stuck in traffic. Acting is suitably unobtrusive—all the characters carry themselves so naturally that I have no idea how much of this, if any, was improvised. Director Abbas Kiarostami does not strain for effect, and yet the feminist undercurrent is unmistakable; I have to wonder how this film went over with the Iranian authorities.

The only problem, I think, is that a large portion of the moviegoing public tends to equate plotlessness with pointlessness. No one demands to know what the “point” might have been of, for instance, that Michael Bay bang-bang epic playing down the road—but a movie with no conventional storyline invariably provokes howls of protest. It’s offensive to a lot of folks, somehow.

TEN requires the ability to appreciate subtleties, and also a bit of patience—the opening shot lasts over ten minutes before a noticeable cut. But if you can hang with it, the film takes on a hypnotic quality. It deftly illustrates the tiny tragedies of life.

A very respectable piece of work, it deserves a broader audience than, from what I can tell, it has gotten so far.

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originally posted: 01/14/03 00:31:50
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