THE MIRROR (Jafar Panahi, 1997)

There would be good films ahead for Jafar Panahi, but Ayneh is only irritating. It revolves around a first-grader whose mother one day fails to pick her up at school and who must try therefore to get home on her own using city buses. The child is plucky, and her arm is in a cast and a sling—a constant reminder for us at what a handicap her predicament places one so young and, temporarily at least, on her own.
     At a certain point on a bus, the actress playing the child takes off her head-cover, cast and sling and announces she is not playing the part anymore. Now she wants to get to her own home; she is fed up with playing a make-believe character who wants to get home. The director and crew try to coax her back into a fictional existence.
     Teheran provides the backdrop; but the paths in and out of fiction and reality seem contrived as though, instead of making a film, Panahi is engaged in an exercise to flex his mental agility for other assignments ahead.