“Macbeth” meets “Romeo and Juliet” in this stinging portrait of rigid marriage rituals in Iran’, Variety wrote about this impressive Iranian drama which tackles themes such as tradition, corruption, greed and love.After their marriage at the start of the film, a couple goes on their honeymoon to the seaside. The man drives much too fast and knocks down an old woman. He decides to drive on but his wife doesn’t agree. She starts thinking she married a stranger and not the actor she once fell in love with (the man had been an actor but has become a businessman at the insistence of his father-in-law at a certain point he even sells medicines on the black market at the time of the Iran-Iraq War). She does everything to try and save the old woman, takes a day off and pays the woman’s hospital bill with her husband’s savings. The man is furious and goes looking for her, causing some concern in her family. But in the end it looks as if he will do penance.The Bride is part of a new trend in Iranian cinema, in which the female (lead) is a powerful figure who keeps her erring husband on the straight and narrow. The film was made for a large audience and was Iran’s biggest box-office hit of all time.
