Mubi Monday: Offside (2006)

It seems like rarely a week goes by lately without me watching a Jafar Panahi film. As much as I enjoy his work, that's more to do with a number of titles being collected together on one particular streaming service than it is to do with me actively seeking out his films. I'm not complaining though. He's a smart and insightful film-maker, and even his lesser films contain elements that make them worth your time.

This is all about a number of young women who all struggle to make their way into a football stadium to watch Iran play in a match that could see them heading to the World Cup. That's it. The fact that women are not allowed inside football stadiums is the major obstacle that needs to be overcome, but the premise is really just an excuse to look at the silliness of such an arbitrary gender divide, and shows how easy it could be to just let all football fans enjoy their fandom alongside one another.

Although I won't pretend to have kept track of the various cast members portraying the characters, as very few (if any) are actually names, I'll do my best here to credit some of the people I enjoyed onscreen. Sima Mobarak-Shahi and Shayesteh Irani are two of the main female characters, both doing good work as they react to their situation in different ways, and Mohammad Asarian plays someone who could be viewed as both enemy and ally to the women, afraid to be seen defying any orders, but also doing his best to protect them while they're in an area they shouldn't be in.

While it may seem like a very slight film, this is exactly the kind of thing that has kept Panahi singled out as an artist that Iran disapproves of, to put it mildly. He uses art to pick at the rules and restrictions of Iranian life, sometimes picking up threads from the history of the area and sometimes just staying absolutely in the here and now, but he always does so in a way that usually mixes standard entertainment with his pointed commentary. Offside is about football fandom, but it's also very much about the treatment and separation of women in Iran. BUT, thanks to a deft screenplay by Panahi and Shadmehr Rastin, it really is also about football fandom. 

Capturing the kind of enjoyably naturalistic performances that he's so often able to elicit from people. Panahi keeps the important football match playing out in the background for most of the runtime, which is approximately match-length, and you just know that there's a lot of emotional outbursts due whenever the final whistle blows. The gameplay is as consistently present for viewers as it is for the main characters, and it would take someone more cold-hearted than myself to not be rooting for the fans to find a way to keep up with the scoreline. 

7/10

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