Available on DVD: “Circumstance”

In the past two decades, we’ve been treated to the riches of Iranian art house cinema, from Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry), Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh) and Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon), among others. With her vibrant, colorful film, Circumstance, Maryam Keshavarz has announced herself as a bold voice, albeit from exile, in the new Iranian cinema.

Set against a backdrop of the underground party scene of hip-hop music, drinking and drugs (aboveground, the morality police will lecture you for playing your car stereo too loud), Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) are schoolmates whose love for each other becomes physical. Atafeh’s older brother Mehran (Riza Sixo Safai), knowing nothing of their lesbian relationship, becomes stuck on Shireen as well.

Mehran is technically the villain of the piece — he’s creepy, and a follower of the strict Muslim laws of the ruling mullahs — but he’s also a sympathetic figure. He’s a failed musician and recovering drug addict, an example of the talented young people wasted by the restrictive regime. Atafeh and Shireen represent a bright future, one that has its latest roots in the 2009 protests against a rigged presidential election.

Keshavarz grew up on the East Coast, and her actors also grew up outside Iran, in places as far flung as Vancouver and France. They filmed the movie, for less than $1 million, in Beirut. The film has a Western feel to it — in storytelling structure and in scenes like the one in an underground video store, where young people discuss the merits of Sex and the City and Milk, which represent two forms of illicit behavior.

But let’s not get too political here. This movie doesn’t work unless the central relationship between Atafeh and Shireen works. It does, beautifully; whether together in a nightclub or alone in a bedroom, Boosheri and Kazemy find a delicacy and sensitivity that reinforces, not diminishes, their strength.