The
affluent members of southern California’s Iranian-American community like to
drink, dance, and party. They are way more fun than an army of Brooklyn
hipsters, but parents still have very specific ideas about who their grown
children should marry. One disorganized writer develops very different notions
of her own in Ramin Niami’s Shirin in
Love (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.
To
be honest, Shirin is more of an aspiring writer, but at least she cranks out
book reviews for her overbearing mother Maryam’s lifestyle glossy. She also has
trouble holding her liquor—something the sensitive brooder William soon learns
first hand, by sheer chance. Having seen her at her sloppiest, he is rather
surprised when she turns up in Northern California to interview Rachel Harson,
his novelist mom. Both mother and son take a shine to the scatterbrained
bombshell, but he is reluctant to admit it. As a further complication, she also
happens to have a mother-approved fiancé and he has a mousy long-term
girlfriend.
Shirin
and William are so obviously head-over-heels, they will do all kinds of negligent
things to sabotage their budding relationship. Of course, Shirin’s Mother
Dearest is not about to stand by and watch her toss away her engagement to a
plastic surgeon. Still, the colorful cast of supporting characters will help
keep SIL on a standard rom-com
trajectory.
Aside
from a benign reference to the old country back-when, writer-director Niami never
troubles viewers with dire circumstances of post-Revolutionary Iran, which is
fair enough. People have to get on with their lives and Shirin’s family is
about as far removed from the Islamist state as you can get. However, lead
actress Nazanin Boniadi has evidently seen real life hardships of a different
sort. According to Vanity Fair allegations supported by Paul Haggis, she was poorly treated
by the Scientology machine when they auditioned her to be a certain actor’s
sanctioned squeeze.
Frankly,
you have to question his taste. SIL is
pretty conventional stuff, but Boniadi just lights up the screen. On paper, her
character’s persistent ditziness would look potentially tiresome, but she plays
her with real warmth and charisma. She also has some nice scenes with Marshall
Manesh as her hen-pecked father, Nader. Letterman’s old stand-up crony George
Wallace similarly makes his shtick work as Officer Washington, the gruff old
softie with literary ambitions. Amy Madigan is relentlessly earthy and likable
as the mothering Harson, but not to an irredeemably annoying extent. However,
Riley Smith’s William is so dour and lifeless it is hard to fathom the
attraction, even if characters keep telling each other how good looking he
supposedly is.