"Ten" is a terribly uneven study of an Iranian woman's life as she drives various people around Tehran. It is typical Kiarostami, and thus it is typically underwhelming. The problem is that the segments don't coalesce into anything significant and the method of representation merely serves to annoy rather than inspire. The relationship between the mother and the son is by far the most compelling and the film would have worked better had Kiarostami remained focussed solely on this relationship. The other encounters serve to broaden the illustration of this woman's world, but they also serve to mute the engagement with her as a person. Instead she becomes a pseudo-sociologist, investigating the world around her, for our benefit. This is a particularly unconvincing aspect of the film. The sequence with the prostitute is clearly the weakest as the woman's interrogation of her passenger devolves into the worst kind of pop-psychology. Ultimately "Ten" registers as a failure, Kiarostami's restrictive techniques are not that much more significant than "Taxi-Cab Confessions" and the narrative fails to compel. Though, as a look into the uncommon world of a different culture it does have some ethnographic benefits.
