小女孩哈瓦用手比划着小树棍投下的影子，着急地说：“等到影子没有的时候，我就要回家了。”她的小伙伴却并不明白这树影的含义。也许她自己也不明白，什么叫作，“今天开始你是个女人了……”。对于9岁的哈瓦来说，如果好好利用这央求来的“最后一个小时”才是问题。导演的镜头却有些残忍，这一个小时竟然就这样无所事事的虚度了过去，当她和小男孩你一口我一口吃着棒棒糖而高兴起来的时候，妈妈准时来到她身边，为她戴上面纱。“已经中午了。”只是一个小时的时间，如此清晰地标示出她生命的节点，从这里开始，一段人生结束，而另一段开始了……

与第一个故事的清晰相对应的，正是最后一个看来仿如空想的故事。已经行动不便的老妇人身后跟着一群推车的小孩，冰箱，电视，家具……排着长队，她如同一个生活的暴发户一样，即使是等船的空隙，也要孩子们在海边布置起了家当。在空荡荡蓝天下，沙发，电视，垂着帐幔的大床，挂在衣架上的婚纱，成套的锅碗，煤气炉，烫衣板……布置成了一个空荡荡的家。老妇人想拾回所有她应该得到却从来没拥有过的女人的一切，但她可以买来婚纱和大床，却无法接受一个“令人羞耻”的透明茶壶。因为突如其来的遗产她得到了梦想，心却被桎梏着，已经不能来拥抱它。

戴着面纱的哈瓦在海边目送着老妇人，她和她的家当们浩浩荡荡地渐渐远去。却有如老妇人在回视自己的过去。正是曾经那个9岁的自己，那个现实中的女人，成就了今天这个空荡荡的自己，一个只剩下虚无的真正女人。然而这一切，哈瓦依然是不能明白的。

《The day I became a woman》，译作《女人三部曲》。由一位伊朗的女性拍摄，讲述了同一天的同一个地方，三个女人的故事……

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阿河在海边骑车，各种男性长辈骑着马赶来用这种理由劝他，阿河只是一个劲儿的往前骑，有的时候她以为自己已经逃脱了，但最后她的车还是被抢了下来。

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This is an interesting film that has distinctive composition of story. It consists of three stories of women in different ages: child, young married girl and old women. However, they are threaded to the main theme of being a woman in Iran. All of them united again in the last scene when the old willow flowed away. The film is surreal and the characters are rebellious, which create an illusion that the women may success because they try really hard to escape the traditional identity of Iranian women. However, this rebelliousness is a surreal optimism. For example, though Hava was permitted to delay till noon to become a woman, she finally was put on a chador. Though Ahoo stuck to herself and kept bicycling, she was ultimately stopped by the males. Though Hoora bought everything she wanted, she couldn’t buy a son.

In the first story of the film, Hava is told that she will become a woman in an hour. In fact, “becoming” is a constant, chronic process that runs through a woman’s entire life, or else how come the following two stories of the trio? I regard this film as a representation of women’s oppression – the social, cultural and religious forces that violently shape women – but also that of women’s resistance.

The first story of Hava denaturalizes the process of becoming a woman, stressing the forcible intervention of religion and culture in that process. In the first few minutes of the film, the question strikes us how anyone can become a woman at such an exact moment, at noon, as with Hava, or at any specific hour. Then I realize that womanhood is not a natural state that someone grows into, nor a physiological stage that means something inherently different; womanhood is imposed on Hava, with the headscarf as a symbol. Just as the headscarf, womanhood comes abruptly to Hava’s life, depriving her of the freedom of childhood. A line is suddenly drawn between Hava and Hassen, who were both “children” just an hour before, but now Hava is a “woman” and everything has changed.

If the headscarf serves as a sign of womanhood, the scene where Hava takes it off in exchange for the toy fish is particularly telling of her inner world, but also foreshadows her future life. When Hava makes this exchange, which entails the removal of her headscarf, she goes back to the state of a carefree girl absorbed with toys. Moreover, she tries to let the toy fish float towards the deep waters, which carries her own hopes of freedom and a bright future. However, it’s high tide and the water flushes the fish back. In the end, only the boys sail for the future, and girls could only go home – Hava’s mother finally puts the headscarf back on Hava’s head and takes her away, making her a woman again. The shot of the black sail appears at the beginning and is repeated at the end of the story. With its black color and soft texture, the black sail speaks to the motif of the headscarf in a questioning way: why does the former belongs to the men while the latter belongs to the women? Why does the sail promise a future while the headscarf deprives one?

A final thought on the first story is about the scene at Hassen’s window. The shot-reverse-shot shows Hava and Hassen both behind the incarceration bars in each other’s point of view. It tries to suggest that the making of woman is never women’s own business; it influences men as well and shapes society.

As recurrent motifs, the sea, the beach, and the headscarf also continue into the later stories. Hava stays at the beach when the boys sail towards the deep sea; as if chasing back the freedom once lost, Ahoo is doing bicycle racing at the seaside. If the first story shows how culture and religion makes a woman, Ahoo’s story shows how the inequality of power between (broadly speaking) genders brutally curbs a woman’s possibilities in life. After four rounds of interceptions and coercions, Ahoo’s husband and male reletives finally take away her bicycle by force – from the increasingly distant perspective of the rival cyclist, we look back on Ahoo being encircled by two men on horses, shouting and screaming in vain.

The tension between the bicycle and the horse suggest a clash between the new and the old worlds, the former inevitably being caught among the powers of the latter, just as Ahoo being caught between the two horses. The wind blows into Ahoo’s headscarf, which almost drops at a certain point, but she clenches it between her teeth and doesn’t let it go. Perhaps religion has become an integral part of herself, and some of the gender roles have been internalized. Dialogue is sparse; most of the time there’s only the sound of breath and the noise of bicycles; alternatively, a kind of monotonous high-pitched sound and some stylized folk songs come with the dramatic moments, such as the approaching of the horses, or the ending scene. In my perspective, the monotonous sound highlights the moments of inner struggle, while the folk song, sung by a male, symbolizes the influence of patriarchy.

One of the elder men askes Ahoo: “Haven’t you got enough sunshine?” For the protagonist of the third story, Hoora, the answer is clearly “not enough,” for which reason she chooses to die in the sunshine. So near her death, is Hoora still “becoming a woman”? For me this final story is the most elusive one, conveying many contradictory messages. She finally “buys” her own freedom, but the story also tells us that the impossibility to buy a child is a regret; She takes a wedding dress with her till the end of her life, which might suggest a returning to family life (or, is she wedded to the sea, the freedom?), but the story also shows boys wearing make-up and the very wedding dress. And what does it mean that she insists on replacing the “naked teacup”?

It’s high tide in the first story, where freedom is taken away. Now it’s falling tide and Hoora finally sets sail, as the boys do, but she is just coming to her death. It questions whether women can gain and enjoy freedom in the world, where they are made to be shackled, where the making of a woman means the deprivation of her freedom.

三个不同人生阶段的女人，一个女人三个不同的人生阶段，怎样理解都可以。童年、青年、老年，每个阶段所处不同的角色让女人陷入不同的内心与外界撕扯之中。童年时期是环境与外界的启蒙，长者要求你干什么，你在不解或不愿意的前提下依旧会遵守与顺从，因为人格还没有健全与完善，更谈不上独立。

即将9岁的小女孩哈瓦被长辈禁止与男孩接触，要开始戴上黑色面纱，她不知道为什么要这样，但她知道她得听话。她得在中午12点之前回家，因为12点她刚好9岁，12点之前是她仅剩的自由时光。她在朋友屋外插入一根木棍，当木棍的影子消失便是正午12点。她在屋外，朋友在屋内，她买了棒棒糖与朋友你一口我一口的分享，这一对青梅竹马眼里满是纯真与浪漫，以及无奈。对哈瓦来说，她即将被自己的国家与文化禁锢，在还没有独立人格与独立思考的阶段被教化。

青年时期的女人阿和与一群带着黑色头巾的年轻女人们一起进行自行车比赛，她的家人们一个个骑马赶来阻止她的骑车行为，这在家人眼中是大逆不道，丈夫甚至会为此而离婚。但阿和依旧一言不发的坚定的向前骑行，不断加快速度试图摆脱家人们的纠缠。这是一个独立人格成型，拥有独立思考能力和自我意识的女人进行反抗与坚守的人生阶段，态度明确，但她最终还是被家人们拦了下来，一切似乎都在向更糟的境遇发展。

年迈的老太胡拉购买了大量商品对方在海滩等待运走，海边的小孩子们面对琳琅满目的货品新奇不已，这些东西对于他们来说太过奢侈，而疯狂购物的老太似乎在弥补曾经失去的自我和时光。如今年迈的她可以买任何自己想买的东西，可以做任何自己想做的事，但她也没有精力来享受这一切，享受独立的自我与生活，疯狂的报复性消费更显悲凉。

小女孩哈瓦用手比划着小树棍投下的影子，着急地说：“等到影子没有的时候，我就要回家了。”她的小伙伴却并不明白这树影的含义。也许她自己也不明白，什么叫作，“今天开始你是个女人了……”。对于9岁的哈瓦来说，如果好好利用这央求来的“最后一个小时”才是问题。导演的镜头却有些残忍，这一个小时竟然就这样无所事事的虚度了过去，当她和小男孩你一口我一口吃着棒棒糖而高兴起来的时候，妈妈准时来到她身边，为她戴上面纱。“已经中午了。”只是一个小时的时间，如此清晰地标示出她生命的节点，从这里开始，一段人生结束，而另一段开始了……

看完了女人三部曲，讲述了三个女人，小女孩哈瓦，经历了婚姻的阿河，以及似乎走到了人生的最后的胡拉。三个女人的三个故事是不是就可以完整的诉说了一个女人的一生呢，不知为何要戴黑头巾，想要出去和朋友玩耍的小女孩，借由自行车想要追寻一些什么逃离家庭的已婚女人却被家人认为丢人，被诅咒的阿河。双手缠满了写着购物欲望的步履蹒跚的老婆婆胡拉。简短的完美的概括了伊朗女人的一生。
小女孩哈瓦可爱她又可怜她，和海森隔着屋子的栅栏吃着一根棒棒糖真的好可爱，可爱他们又怜悯他们。为什么哈瓦走后，栅栏后的海森眼中似乎有泪呢？“我的木棍原来有这么这么长，现在就只剩这么短了，你快来出来呀，影子没了我就要回家了”一个玩具就可以换下来他们的黑头巾，黑头巾只是一个黑头巾而已，所有的意义都是被人为的赋予上的。
阿河这一曲我特别喜欢拍摄的镜头，觉得真酷，黑色与白色的对立，干燥的黄土，给我一种粗糙沙哑的感觉，还挺喜欢的。阿河骑了一路的车。镜头就一直是阿河骑车。最后借前行的人的视角看到了阿河的兄弟挡住了阿河前行的路。
老婆婆胡拉买的所有的东西就构成了她心中的完美的家庭的表象。可是已经这么老了啊，一个女人在老成这样子了的时候去买了所有渴望的东西，东西买到了可是多么遗憾啊！最后漂泊在海上的老婆婆的小拇指上的布条也没有摘下来，最后一个愿望是什么呢？不知道。人生即便是老成那个样子了也不会让你圆满吧。
三部曲的画面构成内容构成都还挺简单的，可是内涵却不简单。很平淡的调子，导演就是在叙述，局外人的立场不掺加任何评论。就把事情的原本样子给你看，你看就好了。这些女人就是这样子的命运。面对这样子的命运你有能力更改？有能力逃避吗？这似乎是导演的拷问。
结尾处小女孩瓦拉在看老婆婆胡拉，新生与衰老的对峙。或许这个衰老就是这个新生明日的宿命。