Ten Details

Taking a technical gamble by filming only the interior of a car from a camera fixed to the windscreen, Abbas Kiarostami provides a compelling insight into the current status of Iranian women in the light of recent liberalisation. As the divorcee ferrying her petulant eight-year-old son Amin Maher around town, Mania Akbari succeeds in moving between chic assurance and disconsolate fortitude as she encounters a variety of women — including a prostitute, a widow and a discarded bride — whose problems far outweigh her own. The issues raised are already momentous, but the simple immediacy of Kiarostami's approach makes them all the more poignant and potent. Courageous in every regard.

"...TEN is a work of inspired simplicity....[Ms. Akbari's] performance has about it an air of sly, confident defiance: it may be Mr. Kiarostami's camera, but she's the one behind the wheel..."