One of the most remarkable aspects of Iran's ongoing cinematic renaissance has been the variety of films it's produced. Less a movement than a moment, it's allowed for such extremes as the small-scale neo-realism of Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is My Friend's House? and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's movie-history fantasia Once Upon A Time, Cinema. Touching neither of those extremes with his 1996 film Leila, Dariush Mehrjui crafts an intimate domestic drama that pits the traditional expectations of marriage against a more modern conception of romantic love and allows neither to emerge as the victor. Leila Hatami and Ali Mosaffa star as a well-situated, blissfully loving young married couple. When Hatami finds she cannot bear children, however, Mosaffa's imperious, manipulative mother (Jamileh Sheikhi) begins pressuring him to take another wife. After meeting resistance from her son, she directs her campaign toward her guilt-wracked daughter-in-law. There's a strong suggestion of melodrama in the situation, and a touch more in Mehrjui's bold, expressive camerawork, but it goes no further. Helped incalculably by Hatami's understated performance and a refusal to villainize even Sheikhi's demanding character, Leila sustains its wrenching believability. Content cooking Chinese food and watching faded videotapes of Dr. Zhivago, Hatami and Mosaffa enjoy their lives as a cosmopolitan Iranian couple and attempt to stretch their happiness out as long as their situation allows, joking about unsuitable (and unseen) brides even as Sheikhi's demands for an heir grow more insistent. A microcosmic look at a society at a crossroads—and a subtle but unmistakable comment on the role of women within it—Mehrjui's film grows increasingly affecting as it progresses, arriving at a conclusion with implications far more bitter than sweet.