Ten

The set-up in this elegant and engrossing Kiarostami experiment is deceptively simple: over a period of days, a woman ferries passengers by car from one place to another in Tehran. Among them are her young son, who can’t grumble and complain enough about her, and five very different women. The ramifications of these journeys, however, are anything but elementary, since the women traverse and express the emotional and political breadth and depth of Iranian modernity. The entire film takes place within the car, a formal conceit that gains deep metaphoric resonance as each woman reveals a bit of her life and, in turn, life for Iranian women.