Jafar Panahi's Offside is a cinéma vérité-style look at women's rights in Iran. The movie focuses on a young girl who impersonates a man in order to watch a soccer game, even though it is illegal for women to enter the stadium. Caught and captured, she's taken to an area where a number of other girls who tried to sneak in were also taken as punishment. Every so often, a new prisoner is brought in. They share stories of the glimpses of the game they saw before being seized, at times even recreating it with the other captives. The excitement and tenacity are palpable in these women; they couldn't care less that they were being arrested. The focus of the film occasionally shifts to the soldiers guarding them to expose and explore another viewpoint of the situation. Despite that, the film managed to elucidate little on the topic for me.
The movie is somehow both slow-paced and fascinating; it never bores you, but it's not particularly exciting either. All the characters sound dull-witted because they talk lethargically about banal topics. There is a lot of historical and cultural significance that went right over my head, so I wasn't able to fully enjoy the movie. The way the film was scripted made it clear that there were deeper meanings behind the characters' words and actions, and I knew the whole time that I was missing out on something. The way it was shot made the whole production feel amateurish and unprofessional. Don't get me wrong: it's not a poorly-made film. It just doesn't reveal anything too interesting to me that I didn't find out about from the trailer. For really incredible Iranian cinema, check out The Circle or The White Balloon (both by Panahi), but skip this one.IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499537/