Café Transit (Border Café)

The text or story of Café Transit is pretty straightforward: Reyhan is newly widowed with two young children and wants nothing more than to be left to her own devices and run the restaurant left behind by her husband. However, Nasser her brother-in-law desires Reyhan to leave her home and move into his house, as is the custom of the village. Reyhan has no desire to relent to this tradition and continually declines the offers of her brother-in-law, angering him and his younger brother Karim.

Reyhan eventually reopens the restaurant with the help of her husband’s business partner and, to the consternation of Nasser it soon becomes a great success. Many regulars and interesting characters are touched by their experience with Reyhan and for a short while she is happy. The story comes to a head when Nasser appeals to the law of the community to close down Reyhan’s restaurant. Despite her best efforts the judge appointed to decide between the disputants rules against Reyhan and the restaurant is shut down.

At its core Café Transit can be seen as a commentary on control. It can be seen as the struggle for feminism in Iran. It can be seen as a love story, or as the clash of old and new world values. One of the measures of a great work of art is its ability to evoke multiple meanings and invite new readings with each new exposure. Café Transit lends itself well to the post-modern inclination of granting to the audience the privilege of reading into a work of art whatever they believe to be it’s purpose or intent. Of course there is a limit to what one can legitimately claim as the telos of a work of art, but great art has the ability to resonate on some wavelength with the particular experiences of a multiplicity of audience members, illuminating some truth for any given individual. So, depending on where we are in our own life’s journey we may see in Café Transit a love story, or a feminist struggle, or a story of domination and control, or a clash of cultures.

When all is said and done Café Transit is above all an entertaining, moving, and thought -provoking film. It is well acted, well written, and smartly directed. It has the beauty and economy of a Hemingway novel, never going for the easy sell of pulling in the audience through over-wrought sentimentalism or heightened suspense. Instead, like all great storytelling it trusts in its humanity to resonate across languages and cultures, connecting to us through the universality of authentic human experience.