The sexual politics of the veil make for haunting viewing in Deserted Station. After their car breaks down in an isolated town in the middle of the desert, a pregnant woman (Leila Hatami) grieves for her previously stillborn children while her husband (Nezam Manouchehri) goes in search of a mechanic. Melancholy, tender, and charged with rich symbolic power, it's a muted yet strangely fragile film that's as much about Middle Eastern womanhood as the horrors of parental bereavement.

Arriving in a deserted railway town, the couple encounter Feziollah (played by Iranian comedian Mehran Rajabi). He's the town's only remaining male inhabitant, a failed politician who runs the tiny schoolhouse and also acts as the local mechanic, handy man, and general guardian angel. While the husband and Feziollah speed off along the desert roads to buy spare parts, the wife takes over the classes at the local school.

"TEARFUL VISION"

Jumping back and forth between the desert journey and the wife's school class, Alireza Raisian delivers a poignant, understated film about this woman's situation. In the village a calf is stillborn, prompting an afternoon's game of hide-and-seek in the deserted station of the title to turn into a tearful vision of childless solitude and abandonment.

"Children are a part of life, they complete life and continue it," the mechanic tells her husband, while the woman silently wonders if she'll ever be able to bear a child. Feziollah's words are more than just unthinking machismo; they're part of a more troubling world in which veiled women are rounded up into army trucks for unspecified crimes. Feziollah may refuse to acknowledge such matters, but the audience is keenly aware that the reality of male authoritarianism lurks somewhere just off camera.