Elaha

How has a tiny strip of mucous membrane, often no more than an inch in length, sometimes absent from birth, come to signify so much? It can thin away to nothing as a consequence of exercise or hot baths and yet, in a number of cultures around the world, women are still subject to examinations to determine whether or not it is still intact; occasionally, they are killed because it is not. As she approaches the day of her wedding, Elaha (Bayan Layla) is desperate to find a means of repairing her hymen in case her husband should think that she is lacking in virtue. It can be done surgically, but it’s expensive. All she has is a part time job in a laundry, and she absolutely cannot ask family members for help. What is she to do?

Sitting outside a nightclub which they have sneaked off to for a rare night of fun, Elaha and her friends wish that they had German vaginas. Being part of the Kurdish immigrant community means that their choices are policed in a very different way – and one which also differs from the treatment of Kurdish men, who get to comport themselves much more freely and seem oblivious to the hypocrisy of calling women disgusting for doing what they themselves do. That disgust can easily spill over into violence and there are moments in this film when Elaha finds herself in real danger, at the hands of someone who purports to love her.

If you live in a part of society where rules like this don’t apply, or at least not to the same extent, you may be rooting for Elaha to leave her community, or at least to bring about change within it, and to focus her affections on people who respect every aspect of who she is. Reality, however, is rarely that simple. As she makes clear to a teacher who tries to help, she doesn’t want to reject her community and its traditions, which are important to who she is. She doesn’t want to have to build a whole new life – she just wants to find a way of fitting in to the one she already has. The idea that she should reject all that is just as much an imposition as the idea that her intrinsic worth is dependent on her sexual behaviour.

These are big ideas, but they unfold naturally as we observe Elaha exploring her options whilst trying to deal with everything else that’s going on in her life. Other observations crop up along the way. She’s aware that her Kurdish female friends are not necessarily virginal themselves, but there’s a tacit agreement that this is not an acceptable subject for discussion. She’s a bright student but she’s going to set aside any related ambitions when she marries, without questioning how this could affect her in the future. Meanwhile, her father is frustrated by his inability to find a job because his experience abroad counts for nothing and she can’t get experience with a German company without being given a job – another victim of rules that make no sense.

Director Milena Aboyan, who also wrote, watches her characters in silence as the pressure builds up within them. At a key moment she positions Elaha centre frame and zooms slowly in on her, then past her and back out again, showing us her smallness in the world but also giving us a sense of her power. Determined to live on her own terms, this volatile young woman dramatically impacts those around her even when she’s not trying to. But she is also young, and very much alone – is she capable of charting a course that will really get her where she wants to go? What is the price of compromise?

Refusing to supply easy answers, Aboyan lets Layla drive the film with an emotional intensity alongside which everything else fades. Elaha is on fire – but when that energy has nowhere to go, will she burn herself up?