This Iranian Actress Is Being Condemned For Kissing 83-Year-Old Man On Cheek At Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival 2014 is pretty risqué. There’s been that film inspired by Dominique Strauss-Khan being promoted with free condoms and sex toys, that guy who climbed into America Ferrera’s dresson the red carpet and a wardrobe malfunction so epic that it involved an entire boob being on display (no, we won’t link to it, it was very unfortunate).

Each of those incidents must be off the scale when it comes to Iranian morals though, as an actress from there has been castigated by her home country for daring to publicly place a peck on the cheek of a man.

Leila Hatami was spotted kissing – by way of greeting, not even for the cameras – the 83-year-old Cannes film festival president Gilles Jacob on the cheek at the opening at the festival. And as innocent as it is (French people always do that double-peck), a member of the Iranian government has chimed in to have a go at her for it.

‘Those who attend international events should take heed of the credibility and chastity of Iranians, so that a bad image of Iranian women will not be demonstrated to the world,’ Hossein Noushabadi, the deputy culture minister said, according to state broadcaster IRIB, The Independentreports. ‘An Iranian woman is the symbol of chastity and innocence,’ he added.

And it wasn’t even necessarily Leila’s kiss that caused a problem, but it seems as if her presence in Cannes was enough to upset people back home. Her ‘inappropriate presence’ at the festival was ‘not in line with our religious beliefs’.

According to Sharia law – which is used as a basis for policies in Iran – a woman isn’t allowed to have physical contact with a man outside her family. Unless she’s married to him obviously, which, very conveniently, can happen from when the woman – sorry, girl – is just 13 years old, even if that girl is the adopted daughter of the man who wants to marry her.

How’s that for the ‘credibility and chastity’ of Iranians?

The great shame is, Leila isn’t just an actress (not that that’s a bad thing, but you know) – she is also on the jury this year.

Cannes film festival president Gilles has felt compelled to explain the kiss: ‘I kissed Mrs Hatami on the cheek. At that moment, for me she represented all Iranian cinema, then she became herself again,’ he tweeted in French (yup, an 83-year-old is tweeting from Cannes.) ‘This controversy over a usual custom in the West has therefore no reason to be.’

In maybe less stilted language, we totally agree. This amount of hoo-ha over a kiss? It makes Cannes – the film festival where all of the above happened and a female-majority judging panel is pretty rare – seem positively progressive when it comes to equal rights.

And considering Leila is at Cannes in her capacity as a judge of the films, it adds extra insult to injury that the Iranian authorities can’t simply be proud of her for representing them at the event. Boo.

Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.