My favorite dessert: A lovely, deep, and sad little Iranian miracle (***)

That the personal is political is, depending on how you look at it, a cliché, a proclamation to take to the streets, or, if necessary, one of those tiny discoveries that illuminate everything. When Carol Hanisch wrote her essay with precisely that title, something suddenly became evident. And that something has to do with the radical impossibility of separating what we are from what we suffer. My Favorite Dessert is a profound and avowedly intimate film. It all unfolds in an encounter between two lonely older people who, at a given moment and perhaps accidentally, recognize each other. And yet, in truth, few decisions so personal seem more political. And not only because their decision to be together goes against all social conventions, against all taboos, and despite the express prohibition of a political regime that punishes any dissent, no matter how seemingly trivial. It is also, and evidently, political by its very existence as a film.

My favorite dessert, in fact, was at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival after a long and winding journey of smuggled copies. The ayatollahs' regime made good on its already cyclical threat to ban all productions in which women appear bareheaded without the hijab. All computers and storage drives were confiscated. Only one copy outside Iran was spared from the cancellation fury , and thus the most tidy and innocent love story became a gesture, if not revolutionary, then almost.

The film tells the story of the lonely life of an elderly widow in Tehran. In truth, the character played by Lili Farhadpour with more than a little superbness isn't entirely alone. She has fun with her friends, chats via Zoom with her daughter who lives in Europe, and claims for herself and everyone around her the rare privilege of independence. In other words, she does whatever she wants with whomever she wants. These are things that come with age and relax etiquette quite a bit. Some of the film's funniest scenes feature the foul-mouthed conversations of the group of friends, who are ignorant of prevention or the meaning of the measure. Everything will change the day our heroine crosses paths with a taxi driver, and the latter agrees to try her all-time favorite dessert, but made by new hands.

Directors Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha insist on portraying the will to resist when all is lost. They did so in a more than remarkable way in The Forgiveness. It was the story of a woman and her daughter against a judicial error, one that unjustly condemned their husband and father to death. It was an exhaustive drama, moving to the point of its simple pain. But always from the certainty of everyday gestures, of the most common and at-hand sufferings.

My Favorite Dessert turns out to be a comedy-tinged drama that's as charming as it is profound. And sad. A riot of personal and fiercely political cinema.

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Directed by : Maryam Moghadam, Behtash Sanaeeha. Starring : Lili Farhadpour, Esmaeel Mehrabi, Mohammad Heidari. Running time : 97 minutes. Nationality : Iran.