Educational Media Reviews Online

In this documentary, director Mahnaz Afzali opens up her camera lens and gives the women of Tehran free reign to tell their stories and discuss their daily lives. The setting in which Afazali has chosen to film her subjects is a women’s restroom in the middle of a public park. This is one of the only places that the women feel comfortable enough to open up and talk frankly with each other about marriage, sex, physical abuse and incest. A wide variety of characters are captured in the film, but overall, the women who people this setting are somewhat on the fringes of life. They have been downtrodden, abused or discarded and have very heartbreaking stories to tell. Some of the women are prostitutes. Others are homeless after escaping abusive family situations. Several of the women suffer from mental illness or brain damage, making their stories disconnected and contradictory. There are numerous reports of robberies, beatings and rape. Despite their dire situations, however, the women exhibit an amazing underlying strength. It is also apparent that they rely heavily on each other for emotional support.

The film is comprised of several segments, each focusing upon a different person. At the beginning of each segment the woman’s name is presented on a brief title card. This is the only information that the filmmaker provides about the subjects. All other information must be gleaned from the stories the women tell. While this can sometimes be an interesting technique to use in documentary filmmaking, in this case it doesn’t work so well. There is no context for the action and many opportunities for flushing out the stories are missed. While watching a slice-of-life can sometimes be very interesting, in this case more background information would be useful.

The sound and picture quality are very good throughout, although sometimes it is difficult to follow who is speaking due to the swiftness of speech and the overlapping conversations. The English subtitles are very poor on this film, however. They are sparse, and do not convey much of what is being said onscreen. Also, there are several typos in the subtitles making the conversations confusing at times. For example, several times the word AIDS is misspelled as “aigs.”

Unfortunately, The Ladies Room is not recommended due to its poor subtitling and lack of contextualization. While cinema verité can be a useful technique for some filmic subjects, in this case, the lack of explanation and commentary is a real drawback.