Review: No Hard Feelings (2021)
by Princess Kinoc of Film Police Reviews
Faraz Shariat’s debut film No Hard Feelings (Future Drei) opens with a home video of him, but in the guise that this is the origin of the film’s lead character, Parvis. To me, it is unabashedly cute: a young boy dancing in his Sailor Moon outfit, but perhaps in the eyes of others, it can be seen as controversial. This is why queer cinema is an equally important genre, and his confident feature debut is one of those queer films I highly recommend you see.
To use the words “highly recommend” seems too good to be true, but hear me out with the plot. Parvis (Benjamin Radjaipour) is a confident, proud gay man with Iranian roots and bleached hair. He is German, but his parents are former Iranian exile immigrants who have succeeded in earning their permanent residence in Germany for years as supermarket owners. His parents, owing their dedication to giving Parvis the kind of life they never had in Tehran, are unusually accepting of Parvis’ sexuality, though sometimes it might feel and seem like an alien concept to them. He is quite popular with both the supermarket customers and on Grindr, engaging in sexual activities and hanging out in nightclubs like it’s serious business – Parvis’ youth is emanating from the screen brilliantly, though there are a few bumps here and there, especially with Germany’s rampant racism. His overconfidence comes with a few consequences, too, thus forcing him to do 120 hours of community service, and what better way to exercise the little Farsi he has learned than to work as a translator at the housing project for fellow Iranian refugees.
In contrast, his arrival is not welcomed by fellow Iranians, perhaps because the way he has been whitewashed to adapt to his new country has left him to learn less about housework and other menial tasks. To add to that, his queerness is also a character flaw that the other Iranians in the housing project continue to see, despite his good intentions of mistranslating their appeals to prevent some of them from being deported. All but one, another Iranian named Amon (Eidin Jalali), begins to have a little crush on Parvis. Why not? Parvis is everything he and his sister (Banafshe Hourmazdi) have always wanted to be since they moved to Germany. He can freely express himself without fear of being deported. He lives in a larger, nicer place where he doesn’t have to share his bed with his sister. Parvis, on the other hand, despite the many flings he’s had, begins to notice Amon as well. He tries to flirt with him but fails when Amon himself tries to avoid him at the housing project, all because of the early warnings made by the other Iranian mates he tries to impress as well.
Banafshe, however, is also just as carefree as Parvis, but with limitations. The three soon catch up at a party and the rest, as they say, is history. As the siblings come into play, we soon realize that this is not just your ordinary coming-of-age story, this is an immigrant love story, too. The way that the two represent one with opportunity and one with a lesser opportunity because of her gender is quite an ingenious feature in Shariat and Paulina Lorenz’s screenplay. I was not prepared to see a logo outside the office that read “Welcome to Hell,” because as a woman, that scene is quite similar to the little hells we face when we are undermined and manipulated for being a woman.
No Hard Feelings (Future Drei) also means "Three Futures," and I quite like the literal translation because it somehow proves the whole point of the film. We see three characters, all living in different situations, but all living in one present, representing three possible futures. The film exudes that vibrant youth that a coming-of-age film requires, but it does not lie, nor does it create false pretenses about the process of growth. Parvis, despite living in Germany and adapting to the culture mostly all his life, continues to experience not only discrimination for being gay but also because he still looks and “tastes” exotic. A remark in the film that reminds him of that concludes why this English title was chosen, but somehow it is also a way for us to be reminded that he and his two other friends, Amon and Banafshe, try their hardest to learn how to say the words “no hard feelings” every single damn time.
