OVID.tv Presents AVA Review — A Tug of Angst and Order

“I’m going to kill you, cut you into little pieces!” cries the mother of a disobedient teen on the outdoor stairs of her friend’s apartment complex.

Before the vitriol flares to such heights, we inhabit a car with the teenage Ava Vali and her mother, merely bickering through an ironically calm classical symphony as they drive to school. Apart from the language, it is hard to distinguish this middle-class Iranian girl from her American counterpart. The smoothly gliding camera peruses the gossip of three teenage girls, Ava as well as her friends Melody and Anna. They playfully discuss boys and stir up a contest to see if the titular youth can attract her beloved Nima, seemingly more to impress and defy than to love. We also witness Ava’s homelife, strewn with a pleasant yet misguiding veneer, that distracts from the tight grip her mother holds on the reins of her life, as her parents placidly quibble over breakfast and prescribe their daughter’s future.

Soon enough, Ava drifts off disobediently to meet the boy, garbed in crimson hijab and eyeliner, in a peaceful wooded park. Straddling by bus across austere urban streets, Ava returns to her bewildered mother, from whom she receives endless spurts of quick, biting retorts. Her often absent father is startled to be greeted with constant verbal lashing and Ava even more so to meet with suspicious teachers searching her backpack and besmirching her among rows of primly posed students; her mother has now notified school officials of her mild misbehavior. Not content with playing puppet, Ava clips the strings again and again, furtively calling forbidden friends and dating Nima behind the scenes, risking her music career and social life. In response, Ava resorts to weapons of her own, namely, murmurs of her parents’ improper past, pitting her mother against a rumor as scurrilous as that to which she has been yoked.

OVID.tv’s Ava Shows the Devastation of Thwarted Teen Passion

The subdued, apprehensive color scheme and still camera work seem indifferent to the film’s steady slew of explosive moments, yet intimate close up shots artfully hint at such. We find, in one scene following a fiery confrontation with her mother, Ava swaying to and fro on a creaking wooden swing. The tension wavers subtly, but always increases, despite such interspersals of calm. Having dipped her toes into the bog of rebellion, Ava eventually turns to outright threat, and chooses to bathe demonstrably in the ignominious mud of her confusion--such transpires when, stabbing her own hand, blood spouts against the classroom walls!

CAST:

Mahour Jabbari as Ava Vali
Vahid Aghapour as Father
Sarah Alimardani as Shirin
Mona Ghiasi as Yasi
Houman Hoursan as Nima
Bahar Noohian as Mother
Leili Rashidi as Ms. Dehkhoda
Shayeste Sajadi as Melody

CREATIVE TEAM:

Director/Writer: Sadaf Foroughi
Producers: Kiarash Anvari, Sadaf Foroughi
Production Company: Sweet Delight Pictures
Co-Production (Iran): Saeed Nouri (Wings of Desire)
Production Consultant: Vladimer Katcharava
Director of Photography: Sina Kermanizadeh
Art Director: Siamak Karinejad
Editor: Kiarash Anvari
Sound Design and Mix: Amirhossein Ghasemi
Colorist: Saman Majd Vafaee

For more information or to watch the film, visit the OVID.tv page for Ava.

Images courtesy of OVID.tv.