African Violet movie review by Movie Review Mom

MOVIE TITLE: AFRICAN VIOLET

RATING: No rating

LENGTH: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: A-

IN A NUTSHELL:

Dream Lab Films and director Mona Zandi Haghighi present a gentle and insightful movie based on a true story. The director wanted to make a film about a strong, kind, humble woman with empathy. Then, she realized there was someone exactly like that in her own family. The film has already achieved international acclaim at quite a number of film festivals.

A woman learns that her ex-husband has been put in a retirement home, so she decides to bring him home to her house to care for him. One small hiccup in the kind plan: her new husband is not happy about it at all!

The Iranian movie has subtitles.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Kids will be extremely bored.
No profanity or inappropriate content for children.
Talk of a divorce.

THEMES:

Forgiveness
Friendship
Love and marriage
Loyalty
Strength
Devotion
Do a good deed and God will reward you.
Communication
Family
Motherhood

THINGS I LIKED:

It’s fascinating to be in a typical home of a family living in Iran.
Lovely music.
Very thoughtful and beautiful composition in cinematography.
The actors will be completely unfamiliar to most audiences. The talented cast includes Fatemah Motamed-Aria, Saeed Aghakhani, and Reza Babak.
As a former culinary school teacher, I loved seeing the different kinds of foods Shokoo (Fatemah Motamed-Aria) served. I’ve never seen such gigantic Nan bread?
I thought it was interesting to see married people sleeping in separate twin-sized beds.
It was super interesting to see a policeman arrive at the house saying there had been a complaint against Shokoo so she had to go to the police station and spend the night in jail.
If you do a search on YouTube for “African Violet movie review”, you’ll see a big list of videos about the flowers. I actually wanted to learn more about this popular flower to see if there was some symbolism that the director wanted us to see in the story itself. There are a couple of connections in the movie that you’ll immediately understand, but also some interesting insights into things you might not easily see. For example, African violets do best as house plants. Maybe I’m grasping for insights, but Mr. Fereydoun (Reza Babak) begins to thrive in Shokoo’s home, rather than in the senior center where his children took him to live. The flowers are tricky to take care of. For example, African violets don’t like to be watered from above because getting their leaves wet can harm them. It rains several times in the movie and, maybe it’s a coincidence, but shortly after is when we see Mr. Fereydoun get sick or struggle. It is said that the African violet is a symbol of loyalty and strength, two qualities we absolutely see represented in Shokoo. She is a very likable character.
While the movie takes place in Iran, it does not address political issues or try to make cultural statements about society. The themes are universal.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

The end seemed very rushed.
The tone of scenes changed quickly several times without a clear transition to explain how much time had passed or why the characters were behaving differently.
It’s definitely a slow burn.

FUNNY LINES;

“Men are like brothers. We’ve all messed up sometime in our lives. What matters is that our women don’t find out about them. We’ll get in trouble if they do.” – Reza (Saeed Aghakhani)

ANOTHER MOVIE WITH SIMILAR THEMES THAT YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

<br /> Marriage Story is an American movie featured on Amazon that also takes a look at love and loss in marriage. It has OUTSTANDING performances that earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Adam Driver and wins for Laura Dern. Adam Driver’s incredible performance in one fight scene toward the end made my jaw hit the floor. It is very different from African Violet, but will leave you with a similar feeling of melancholy and sadness.

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