A time for love

Nobat e asheghi

Iran, Turkey

1990

Color

Turkish, Persian

Currently 2.5/5 Stars.
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CAST Shiva Gered, Abdurrahman Palay, Menderes Samancilar, Aken Tunj

Young Gozal whose husband is a taxi driver has an affair with a young blond shoeshine boy. One day an old man who can’t hear well is recording the bird’s songs when he hears what they say to each other. So he finds out about their affair and tells everything to Gozal’s black-haired husband. The black–haired kills the young blond boy and injures Gozal and then surrenders himself to the court. He is sentenced to death and is thrown into the sea as he chooses. Gozal commits suicide in her regular meeting place.

Second story: This time the blond–haired man and Gozal are husband and wife, and Gozal is in love with the black – haired. The blond–haired is the taxi driver and the black–haired is a hawker. The old man gets to know about the affair between Gozal and the black–haired and informs the blond–haired. He intends to kill the black–haired but is killed himself. The black–haired is sentenced to death and as he asks, he is hanged on the tree under which he saw Gozal for the first time. Gozal commits suicide in the hospital.

Third story: Like the first narrative, once again the black–haired and Gozal are husband and wife and Gozal has an affair with the blond-haired. The old man tells Gozal’s husband about this affair. The two rivals start fighting, but the black-haired refuses to kill the blond-haired when he is in the situation to do so. This way he gives his rival the chance to tell him but the black–haired holds the wedding party of Gozal and the blond–haired. In the wedding ceremony, the court judge who has resigned from his job due to its difficulties is present. The black–haired gives the bird and groom a lift to their house and gives his taxi to them as the wedding present. The blond–haired who has decided to give Gozal back to the black–haired, runs after him but instead he finds the old man who confesses that he has been in love with Gozal for many years. —Makhmalbaf Film House website

Director

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

One of the most popular and influential Iranian filmmakers of his era, Mohsen Makhmalbaf was born in Teheran on May 29, 1957. As a working-class teen, he became involved with a militant terrorist group battling against the Shah’s regime, and at the age of 17, he was sentenced to die after stabbing a policeman. Ultimately, his youth allowed him to escape the fate of a firing squad, and after serving only five years of his sentence, he was freed in the wake of the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. After his release, Makhmalbaf helped establish an artists’ group known as the Islamic Propagation Organization, and he became a prolific writer of plays, essays, short stories, and finally screenplays.
His first filmed script was 1981’s The Explanation, and he directed his first feature, Nassouh’s Repentance, the following year. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he wrote and directed roughly one film a year, each wildly different in style and content. Among his other early works were… read more

One of the most popular and influential Iranian filmmakers of his era, Mohsen Makhmalbaf was born in Teheran on May 29, 1957. As a working-class teen, he became involved with a militant terrorist group battling against the Shah’s regime, and at the age of 17, he was sentenced to die after stabbing a policeman. Ultimately, his youth allowed him to escape the fate of a firing squad, and after serving only five years of his sentence, he was freed in the wake of the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. After his release, Makhmalbaf helped establish an artists’ group known as the Islamic Propagation Organization, and he became a prolific writer of plays, essays, short stories, and finally screenplays.
His first filmed script was 1981’s The Explanation, and he directed his first feature, Nassouh’s Repentance, the following year. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he wrote and directed roughly one film a year, each wildly different in style and content. Among his other early works were 1983’s Two Sightless Eyes, 1984’s Fleeing From Evil to God, and 1985’s Boycott, a fictionalized account of his time in prison. With 1986’s The Peddler, an autobiographical collection of vignettes exploring the plight of Iran’s urban poor, Makhmalbaf first began attracting international film festival attention. With 1990’s Time of Love and its immediate follow-up, The Nights of Zayandeh Roud, he also came under the scrutiny of the Iranian government, which promptly banned both features.
Again switching gears, in 1992 he released Once Upon a Time, Cinema, a comic fantasy about the evolution of Iranian filmmaking. While making 1993’s The Actor, a satire of the media in contemporary Iran, his first wife burned to death in a domestic accident (he later married her sister). The power of the film remained his focus for 1994’s Salaam Cinema, and with 1996’s Gabbeh, he even found U.S. distribution for his work. Makhmalbaf was also the subject of several documentaries, among them Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up and Houshang Golmakani’s Stardust-Stricken, Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A Portrait. —allmovie guide

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