The Patience Stone: Film review - refreshingly lyrical and offbeat approach to Afghanistan

(15) Atiq Rahimi, 102 mins Starring: Golshifteh Farahani, Hamid Djavdan, Hassina Burgan, Massi Mrowat

After countless macho movies about Afghanistan in the shadow of war, it is refreshing to encounter a film with such a lyrical and offbeat approach.

Golshifteh Farahani plays a young Muslim mother whose husband is badly wounded. He lies on the floor, showing no sign of life as she tends him and talks to him in long poetic monologues.

War is never far away. Nor can she escape the strictures of moralising and hypocritical men.

Co-scripted by Jean-Claude Carrière (Buñuel's regular collaborator) from a novel by Rahimi, the film has a self-consciously literary feel and some strange surrealistic twists but is beautifully played by Farahani and refreshingly different from other dramas and docs about women living under the veil.