Poetic and unflinching, The Patience Stone reveals the complex secrets of one woman’s life and love in a violent world of patriarchal confinement, in a story that is both deeply personal and resoundingly universal.
Confessions of a woman (Golshifteh Farahani) confined inside a bombshelled home with a comatose husband. Her rebellion against a repressive religious regime is unexpected, and Farahani is outstanding.
The Patience Stone contains a number of engrossing scenes and encounters with supporting characters that don’t always play out as you’d expect, while Farahani – in what is frequently a one-woman show – is constantly surprising and impressive.
A beguiling and perplexing piece of conceptional slow cinema.
This is a film to be compared with Almodóvar's Talk to Her or maybe Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle. Its final moments have overwhelming force.
The Patience Stone is never dull, though, thanks partly to resourceful direction from Atiq Rahimi but mainly to a powerhouse performance from Golshifteh Farahani, her expressive eyes a cry of protest against a harsh patriarchal culture.
The film has a self-consciously literary feel and some strange surrealistic twists but is beautifully played by Farahani and refreshingly different from other dramas and docs about women living under the veil.
This is a striking and provocative film, and essential to its success is Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, giving a deeply layered performance as the woman.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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