Amir GanjavieIn Woman and Child, Saeed Roustaee presents an unflinching and, at times, deeply unsettling portrait of a woman trapped in a structure that denies her not only justice and agency but even the space to fully feel. Roustaee’s return to the Cannes Film Festival after a politically imposed hiatus comes with a film that is emotionally resonant but structurally uneven—and perhaps this very contradiction is the most honest aspect of the work.
At the center of the film is Mahnaz, a widowed nurse played with quiet intensity and precision by Parinaz Izadyar. She struggles to maintain a fragile balance between her overwhelming responsibilities at work and the demands of raising two children alone. When her teenage son Aliyar is suspended from school and later suffers a traumatic incident, Mahnaz begins to unravel. Her attempts at control morph into increasingly reckless and violent behavior, distancing her from those around her.
Beneath the surface lies a scathing critique of a society where the very notion of justice has collapsed. Roustaee portrays a world in which formal laws have lost their function and morality has been reduced to private emotional responses. In such a space, revenge becomes not only understandable, but at times even justified. Mahnaz’s descent into rage is painful to watch, but it emerges from a world where the law is absent and emotion is the only currency left.
Still, the film is not entirely enveloped in sorrow. Some of its most moving and surprising moments unfold in the school setting. Roustaee captures scenes of childhood in all its defiance, laughter, and minor rebellions. These moments are neither nostalgic nor idealized. The educational system is portrayed as rigid and incapable of understanding the emotional complexity of children, but the critique is delivered with a gentle, almost playful tone. This tonal duality enriches the film and allows its tragedy to be grounded in everyday life.
However, the film’s structure feels overly calculated. Each scene connects precisely to the next, and every character decision appears designed rather than lived. While this structural coherence strengthens the narrative on one level, it weakens the film’s emotional pulse. Real life doesn’t unfold this cleanly. People don’t always act out of logic. This obsession with order occasionally suffocates the spontaneity of the film. The result is a mechanical design that not only blunts the film’s emotional impact but also dilutes its critical and political charge, lending the message a sense of overstatement and distance.
And yet, what rescues the film from dryness and predictability are the moments when image takes over from narrative—especially through Mahnaz’s face. In a few key scenes, particularly in the classroom and in the closing minutes, Roustaee lets silence, hesitation, and ambiguity speak for themselves. Izadyar’s restrained performance—her trembling gaze and quiet reactions—adds a layer of emotional complexity that transcends the script. The story pauses, and the face speaks. These moments are not only unpredictable, but they lift the film beyond its mechanical structure and transport it into a space of emotional ambiguity and contradiction.
Perhaps the most beautiful of these moments comes in the film’s final scene—a conclusion that is both unexpected and devastating. After an explosion of violence and a buildup of rage, something wholly unanticipated appears: love, forgiveness. Not because the world has changed, but because Mahnaz no longer has the strength to keep fighting. Her fury has been emptied, and what remains is a fragile, almost involuntary gesture—not a sign of triumph, but an echo of sorrow. This emotional shift unsettles the entire narrative trajectory and, for that very reason, renders it deeply human.
Woman and Child is far from a flawless film. But perhaps its flaws are part of its truth.
It is a film full of contradictions: tightly structured and emotionally fragmented, methodical and raw, sometimes roaring, sometimes whispering. It critiques, but it also observes. While it still hasn’t found a perfect balance between narrative and image, in its silences, in its faces, and in the details of ordinary life, Roustaee reaches toward a truth that cannot be told or written—only felt.
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