The Red Suitcase is a 2022 short film (18 minutes) from Luxembourg, directed by Cyrus Neshvad.
Ariane is a 16-year-old girl from Iran. She has just gotten off a plane at the Luxembourg airport, but she is strangely reluctant to pick up her red suitcase. Once she has finally gotten the suitcase, she continues to hesitate, being unwilling to leave baggage claim and the secure area. Eventually the reason becomes clear: there is a man waiting there who is at least 30 years older than she is, and she has been pledged to marry him. Ariane hopes to escape, but she faces the challenge of how to get past the man, who is waiting in the reception area.
Tropes:
- Arranged Marriage: Not quite Old Man Marrying a Child, but close. Ariane is sixteen years old, as the airport security guards discover when checking her passport. The age of the man isn't mentioned but he is obviously well into his forties.
- Bittersweet Ending: Ariane escapes a forced marriage with a man that's decades older than her. But she's left to a very uncertain fate as a teenaged girl, alone in Europe, not speaking any language but Farsi and with nothing but the wad of money she got in exchange and the clothes on her back. And she loses her art and art supplies when the man takes her red briefcase from the baggage hold of the bus.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: The hijab. Ariane taking it off is symbolic of her making decision to rebel. It also means that she can get past the man, since he's looking for a girl in a hijab. Later, when the man, on the phone to Ariane's father, mentions her red suitcase, she is able to use the hijab to wrap up the suitcase and hide it. Finally, the man finds the hijab tangled up with the suitcase at the end, revealing that Ariane did in fact get away.
- Chekhov's Gun: The fact that the suitcase is a distinctive red. That makes it more challenging for Ariane to get past the man and out of the airport.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Not quite Real Time, but a pretty short time span, as a teenaged girl at the airport has to figure out a way to get past the older man who expects to marry her.
- Fish out of Water: Ariane is a teenaged girl who speaks only Farsi, at the Luxembourg airport. She is unable to explain her situation to the airport security guards or the woman exchanging money.
- The Horseshoe Effect: The last shot of the film is a long, slow zoom onto the smiling face of a model in an advertisement. The obvious suggestion is that maybe European and Iranian societies aren't all that different in how they force women into particular gender roles.
- Letting Her Hair Down: As done in this film, the gesture has a couple of layers of meaning. When Ariane takes off her head covering and lets her long, thick hair down, she is obviously casting aside the subordinate role that patriarchal Iranian society would force on her. But she is also trying to get past her would-be husband who is waiting just outside the door. She does get past him, because he is expecting to see a woman in a hijab and not a woman with long black hair hanging free.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Ariane's father apparently realizes this at the end, once it's become plain that she has somehow escaped the man waiting for her at the airport. He sends her a panicky text asking her to come back home and telling her that she can do anything she wants in life. Instead of answering she turns her phone off.
- No Name Given: In fact, almost a Nameless Narrative. Ariane's name as shown on her passport is the only name in the film.
- The Runaway: Ariane's uncertain fate at the end, having gotten away from her prospective husband, and rejected a desperate text from her father asking her to come back home.
- Title Drop: The man on the phone mentions that Ariane is supposed to be carrying a red suitcase.
