Perhaps a more commendable effort than a noteworthy film, The Patience Stone stars Golshifteh Farahani as the wife of a paralyzed rebel fighter, who so much as one can as a woman in a fundamentalist Muslim country, speaks truth to power. With her husband essentially in a coma (though she believes he can understand her), Farahani dredges up their unhappy past. It’s a female empowerment story, a rarity from this corner of the world. But the film itself is rather monotonous, and while Farahani is certainly good, it amounts to little more than a one-woman show. You may have seen Farahani in the Ridley Scott movie Body of Lies. Her appearance in that film and subsequent flirtations with the West earned her an exile from Iran. At the very least, we can hope this is another step on a long road to progress for Muslim women.