Offside

In Iran, cheering for the national soccer team is a crime.

It is, that is, if you're a woman who dares to venture into Tehran's Azadi Stadium for a match. The coliseum has 90,000 seats, none of which an Iranian female is allowed to take. But so rabid is the passion for the national sport that women stuff their hair under caps and don baggy male clothes in hopes of sneaking through the turnstiles.

Jafar Panahi's "Offside" catalogs the plight of six women who sneaked into Azadi to watch Iran take on Bahrain for the right to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. Soldiers have rounded up the group and half-heartedly herded them into a pen, cruelly placed on the concourse in a spot just a few feet out of view from the field.

It's an absurd situation — six women dressed like men, kept away from a game by soldiers who don't believe in what they're doing — and Panahi mines the material for sardonic chuckles. Most films featuring characters who cross-dress in order to get away with something go for dopey mistaken-identity humor. "Offside" finds its laughter in the painful reality that there's no way any of the women could be mistaken for guys. The best they can hope for is that their enthusiasm, visible in face paint and flag capes, nudges their male oppressors to look the other way.

The dialogue is rich and flavorful, with the women debating the finer points of the game with soldiers who feign indifference but ache for their captives. In private conversations, the guards count down the days until their mandatory service expires.

The soldiers and women generate an uneasy bond, with both groups abuzz with the game's excitement, chattering about reports that come from passers-by. The drama comes in bizarre form. One of the ladies needs to use the bathroom — a difficult proposition in a stadium that lacks female facilities — and when one of the prisoners disappears, one soldier orders another to scour the crowd for a replacement woman in order to meet the quota.

"Offside" is one of the most lovable and accessible films from Panahi, who routinely subverts Iran's government and social customs. In "The Circle" (2000), he told Iranian women's interrelated stories of woe. "Crimson Gold" (2003) was a tale of an honest man driven to thievery by a bleak economy.

Panahi's work is banned in Iran but fairly popular in the European and American art-house circuits. His films are the modern equivalent of messages in bottles, hurled out to sea in hopes that those in other, freer lands might see what he sees.

"Offside" is rated PG for language throughout, and some thematic elements. Running time: 93 minutes.