My Favourite Cake

There is something quietly magnificent in it. Moments like these in life are poignantly brief – but many never have them at all. It’s a lovely film.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

My Favourite Cake is radical and heartwarming. Above all, it’s a reminder that in a world where everyone is scrutinised and judged, pure love remains timeless.

Perhaps more radical than the censor-bating, though, is the fact that My Favourite Cake trains its lens on lonely, ordinary older people – a demographic all too frequently invisible to film-makers the world over. A rare delight.

Moghaddam and Sanaeeha obviously have things to say about the state of their country, but at heart this is a romantic, even nostalgic film.

What it lacks in edge, the film certainly makes up for in the quality of its performances and watching Farhadpour and Mehrabi mutually glow off each other is a pleasure that it feels almost cruel to have so abruptly denied.

My Favourite Cake is a slice-of-life film with considered dialogue and heartfelt performances that unravels a culturally specific repression, one that got the Iranian filmmakers banned from France and Germany to edit and promote this film, but also the more universal loneliness of the elderly who still have more life to live.