Leila

This sensitively directed, slowly paced, spare, painful and finally very moving drama describes a marriage torn apart by the prejudices and self-tormenting ordinances forced on a childless young couple under Islam. The director uses the simplest of narrative strategies: he takes a well-to-do middle class couple, happy and contented, for whom the compulsion to have children is a sole product of traditional and parental pressure (the telephone in this film is the primary symbol of threatening interference), and watches their gradual sundering. After the endless hormone and AI treatments, endoscopy, herbal remedy and the rest, the wife, Leila, is convinced by her mother-in-law that she must persuade her husband to take a second wife. A little over-extended, but intelligent, well-acted and compassionately clear-eyed throughout.