Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.It would be nice to talk about My Favourite Cake purely as what it is: a lovely and bittersweet comedy of moments seized in the autumn of life. So for now at least, let us do that. The film is Iranian and co-directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. Moghaddam is an actor too. (Her roles include the terse 2013 drama Closed Curtain from dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi.) But their star here is the superb Lily Farhadpour, cast as Mahin, 70, an affectionate but sad-eyed Tehran widow. Early on, we see her visited by a jumble of female friends. The result is hilarious. (You are unlikely to hear funnier dialogue about polyps.) But loneliness also gnaws at Mahin. Living abroad, her daughter sends her gifts of clothes, kept pristine because she has no one to wear them for. Until, finally, she makes a dash for companionship. Quietly resolved, she stakes out a local restaurant popular with taxi drivers where she spies the slight, equally single Faramarz (Esmail Mehrab). He is duly invited to drive her home. What follows is a night of dancing, dolma and tentative romance — the nerves of both parties weighed against there being so little time. Though the story will grow more complicated, the mood is so beguiling, you might almost forget where the couple are. But life and art are not simply divided in a tyranny. Last summer, Iranian security forces raided the home of Ata Mehrad, Moghaddam and Sanaeeha’s editor, seizing copies of the film. Soon afterwards, Moghaddam and Sanaeeha, who are married, were banned from leaving Iran, charged with making anti-government propaganda. A legal verdict is still pending. The alleged crime? While scenes of Mahin and Faramarz drinking wine had angered the authorities, the co-directors believe the crux was Farhadpour being seen without a hijab inside her character’s home. At the time of writing, they now face a continued travel ban, and possibly prison time.Aside from the outrage involved, the shame is that this charming film should need to be discussed with reference to the Iranian regime. The stuff of the story is universal: age, love, the social invisibility of older women. Sadly, of course, it was always going to be a hard tale to tell in a theocracy where all women are obsessively monitored. Likewise, the mere fact that Mahin and Faramarz recall a time before the 1979 revolution can’t help but seem subversive. After all, that means they remember when sharing food and music would not bring police to your door.★★★★★In UK cinemas from September 13
