In uncertain times, everything is normal until it’s not. This is the thesis of “The Friend’s House is Here,” a film about young artists in Tehran’s underground scene whose carefree lives are driven by the pursuit of truth and beauty — until, one day, they’re not anymore. That’s when community really matters, and the most radical thing about Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz’s film is its depiction of women working together to protect each other’s hopes and dreams. Otherwise, why keep on living?
The film opens on a destabilizing note, dropping viewers into the middle of an interactive theater piece without any explanation of what’s going on. After a while, the camera pulls back to reveal the audience surrounding the actors, reframing what we’re seeing as a performance and re-establishing our sense of reality. This makes sense, as does the scene that follows, where the cast members come together for a party. They drink, they smoke, they flirt, they argue about art and philosophy. Everything is fine, at least for now.
Titled in response to Abbas Kiarostami’s “Where Is the Friend’s House?,” “The Friend’s House is Here” unfolds in a series of delicately stitched-together long takes, snippets of conversation that accumulate to form a portrait of a country and a generation on the brink of incredible change. It does so through the story of Pari (Mahshad Bahraminejad), the leader of an underground improvisational theater group, and her best friend and roommate Hana (Hana Mana), a performer who likes to film herself dancing in front of famous monuments in Tehran.
Pari is the sensible one, while Hana is more reckless; it’s illegal for women to dance in public in Iran, let alone without a hijab, and Hana could face serious consequences if she were caught. Pari worries about her friend, and over time we realize that the performance in the opening scene was about Pari’s fear that Hana might some day be arrested for expressing herself a little too freely where the wrong people can see.
The way that this dynamic plays out is subtle yet shocking, erasing any sense of safety that might have built up over the film’s easy, intimate first hour. It’s as if the earth has shifted beneath our feet, imperceptively at first and then all at once. The look of fearful realization that spreads across Bahraminejad’s face when Pari is approached by a “fan” who turns out to be from the Ministry of Culture lets the audience in on what’s happening in that moment, and the look of determination on Mana’s when she comes home to find the apartment ransacked and Pari gone tells us what’s going to happen next.
The details we learn along the way are important, although they might not seem that way at first. One afternoon at rehearsal, the members of Pari’s theater troupe complain about being tired, and over the course of their conversation it’s revealed that none of them were working late or out at a party — they were kept up by the sound of explosions during a nighttime bombing. In that same scene, one character jokes about how evacuating the city during the June War was like a vacation, and how everyone in the countryside was nice because they felt sorry for him.
As it turns out, everything is deeply not fine. But without the means or legal permission to leave the country, these characters have no choice but to get up in the morning and keep going to work. Pari works at an art gallery, where she overhears a patron telling her supervisor that she should be careful about employing an underground artist — they’re criminals, after all. Pari stands still, hands clasped in front of her, and pretends that she’s not listening.
The events of “The Friend’s House Is Here” are fictional, but they’re true to the reality of life for artists in contemporary Iran. Bahraminejad is a founding member of a real improvisational theater troupe, many of whom appear as versions of themselves. And Mana’s social-media videos, as risky as Hana’s are in the film, are what led the directors to cast her in the role. The movie was shot underground, risking exposure and possible jail time for the filmmakers. And while what Hana and Pari face is alarming enough, circumstances have only worsened since then, as ‘It Was Just an Accident’ director Jafar Panahi described in a recent acceptance speech for the National Board of Review.
But although this is a story about innocence lost, the overwhelming impression left by “The Friend’s House is Here” is one of sweetness and hope. Pari and Hana fight like sisters, and love like them, too. The sacrifices Hana makes for Pari, and are made for her in turn, are touching examples of true friendship in action. This is what’s important in life, Ataei and Keshavarz seem to be saying. This is what will get us through.
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