Synopsis
Tuba works daily at a grueling textile factory in Iran, returning home every night to deal with the rest of her problematic family, which includes: a pregnant daughter whose husband beats her regularly; a teenage son, who's been getting into trouble due to his burgeoning career in radical politics; and an older son who goes to great lengths--such as attempting to sell the family's meager house--in order to get an engineering job in Japan as a means of getting out of Iran.
Your Movie Library
Cast
Recommendations
- 90
Los Angeles Times
This splendid film is no mere polemic, for Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, often called the first lady of Iranian cinema, is above all an accomplished storyteller and dramatist who understands the evocative power of sound and image. - 88
Boston Globe
More a bleak docu-melodrama than an esoteric morality play. - 80
Village Voice
Bani-Etemad's generational melodrama observes a blue-collar dynastic collapse worthy of Lillian Hellman, but stays steadfastly fixed on the quotidian of Tehran life. - 80
The New York Times
The real protagonist is the family itself -- a fragile, complex organism undermined by internal conflict and menaced by the cruelty and indifference of the society around them. - 80
L.A. Weekly
Under the Skin is distinguished, like so much contemporary Iranian cinema, by the way its striking visuals and strategic use of sound tell the underlying story. - 80
Salon
Solidly made and sometimes quite moving chronicle of a working-class family in Tehran. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
This gritty drama doesn't rank with the greatest Iranian films, but its urban characters offer an interesting change from the nation's best-known productions, which generally center on rural subjects. - 75
New York Daily News
Watching Tuba's proud girls disappear into anonymous clouds of chadors says more than any political diatribe could, and Bani-Etemad is wise enough to know it.