“Dressage” is a Psychoanalytical drama with identified peculiarities, focusing on the praxeology of today’s teen generation. This exclusivity, emphasizes on the importance of this pathological movie even more.
Pooya Badkoobeh’s first movie which won the significant award of Berlinale Generation, is based on a script by Hamed Rajabi, a director-script writer who has films like “Rainy seasons”, “Parviz”, “A very ordinary citizen” and “A minor leap down” in his resume.
This indication becomes more important since one can follow the expansion of an idea in the background of different dramas in these particular movies (Parviz, A very ordinary citizen, A minor leap down and finally dressage).
An idea which in Badkoobeh’s film, has reached an attractive consistency and harmony with the components of the drama itself.
It takes courage to choose a main character who (in its initial definition) does not match the usual pattern of heroism in cinema, and in a dramatic gradual process, acts heroic and unpredictable, going beyond her initial definition. This courage of course accompanies risks and consequences.
Also, in memorable “Parviz”, this hero becomes a middle-aged bachelor struggling with everyday life. With his father getting married, he loses his status at home, the neighborhood and also at work and starts engaging in intensifying chain suicidal actions. The same hero, becoming the old man coming down with Alzheimer’s (in A very ordinary citizen), the same character recognizes a young girl as his wife and starts acting meaningful and suicidal just to help her. Here, the character is not that believable and relatable in the context of drama.
Also, when the pregnant woman in A minor leap down decides to get revenge on her family, people around her and herself with a dead baby inside her due to their lack of attention and mutual understanding (she has a background of mental illness) something seems not right. That’s where the drama and progressivity of the character are questionable.
With the same initial description of the hero, in “Dressage” we see a teenage girl from today’s generation. Golsa (Negar Moghadam) is an identified and reliable character and more than anything, she owes this to the exact perception of the writer and the director of this generation. A perception that helps the expressions of this quiet and secluded character mirror her inner turbulence, passivity, actions and reactions related to the Psychoanalytic of her injured soul.
Correctly merging the director and writer’s views in structure and apprehension, movie and the script progress very fluently and one can draw the behavioral curve of the main character relying on the details and examples and thus, redefine and follow her actions and reactions.
The movie has an appealing yet stressful beginning: a sequence where a teenage gang are joking and having fun. But according to a classic formula, this energy hits an obstacle and very quickly, the issue of the camera in a grocery store they stole from, becomes the main problem.
This apparently simple issue (which can potentially cause great harm to the kids) could have easily been solved with an inside deal, but the drama is formed where Amir (Yasna Mirtahmasb) who seems to be Golsa’s boyfriend -or is interested in her- forces her (by threatening and physical violence) to take the camera footage from the grocery store where they hit the Afghan shop boy.
This is the key point where being put in this special position, transforms Golsa from a naïve teenager and a shadow member of a teen gang to a mature, consistent young woman, causing her to make the final decision.
In fact, from this initial layout, one can understand very well the placement of the characters in new group settings that is very popular between teenagers these days. It is especially visible what makes Golsa accept Amir’s condition despite her fear: the need to be accepted in the group.
Golsa is a heroine who dances to the beat of her own drum, despite the usual patterns of hero-making in the cinema (even in physical sense) this apparent conflict along with the force and threats she is facing, accumulates so much anger in her that leads to her making her life-changing decision. But naturally a powerful, capable drama cant progress single-layered and shallow and keep the audience at the same time, specially when the initial definition of the heroine, is some introvert person with limited physical peculiarities of a young girl, who does not have odd projections in her behavior either in the society or the film itself.
The film, contains a very deep and reliable substrate which is an advantage to the script and is also one of the signs that this idea, is very consistent in the writer’s mindset. Selecting the subline of Golsa’s interest in horses (which forces her to secretly work in the horse riding club to make money), comes from a special intelligence that enriches the drama line and brings it to a whole new and creative level in Iranian movies, and at the same time layers her character and puts forward the possibility to express her inner issues in a hard time that is puberty. Specially when her pride is shattered in the group, by an abusive boy who she assumed loved her.
What’s more important is the selection of “Dressage” as the title. Dressage is a special field in horse riding which her favorite horse is competing in. the maintenance and treatment of these horses are particular. This field is considered art, because it’s main focus is on the aesthetics of horse behavior. This is why more than anything, the sequence where Golsa is training the dressage horse in circles, reflects the ineffective repetitive spinning, the boredom and predetermined manner that everyone expects her to “behave”. From her parents to Amir, everyone wants her to give the footage back and end the whole thing at once. But it seems what is going on in the mind of this small, fragile girl is beyond moving in the same circle of imitation. There is her shattered self-esteem, the broken love and pride she has to fix somehow.
For this reason, one can resolve that when Golsa takes the horse out to walk further out his area, is in fact symmetrizing her mindset to break this vicious circle. This symbolic act finds its logical place in the realistic texture of the movie, becoming a predictive code of the decision she makes in the end.
We should consider Negar Moghadam a win in picturing a heroine who -at least on paper- is pictured very correct and accurate based on the behavioral details of a generation. To become a reliable image of an unsupported generation’s representative, a smart choice was needed. This choice was made perfectly. Just like how Ali Musaffah and Shabnam Moghadami (as a couple) are very believable but different from their former roles, Alireza Aghaqani and Yasna Mirtahmasb are very unfamiliar but tangible selections for these characters.
“Dressage” is a well-made and structured first movie which highlights the unique view of its young director to reach the best translation of an apprehensive script. This movie is just what Iranian Cinema needs to exit the closed and reiterative atmosphere (just like the dressage horse) and enter a new era where modern heroes, present new concepts of heroism matching with today’s standards. A movie -correctly- pointing at ferment angles in today’s teenager lives and this accuracy in shooting the final target, deserves to be seen and thought about.
CinemaCinema website- Sahar Asr-azad