PERSEPOLIS (M)

Directors:
Vincent Paronnaud
Marjane Satrapi

Starring:
Catherine Deneuve
Chiara Mastroianni

Plot Summary:
Marjane Satrapi grew up wearing sneakers and beating up boys. She wanted to grow up to be a saint. When she was ten years old, her world changed overnight. Girls and boys had to use different doors to enter the school. She had to cover herself with a long dark robe. Grownups around her began to disappear. Marjane has several close encounters with the country's morality police and her teachers at school. Iraqi bombs fall on the street where she lives.

Genre:
Drama Fantasy

Duration:
92 mins

Origin:
France, U.S.A

Review Highlights:
PERSEPOLIS is based on four autobiographical graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, who also co-directed the film version with Vincent Paronnaud.

This wonderful, very open autobiography tells Marjane’s story frankly and fearlessly. The film’s mainly black and white animation follows the style of her original graphic novels and is very effective, with interesting voices used for the characters: CHIARA MASTROIANNI for Marjane, CATHERINE DENEUVE for her mother, DANIELLE DARRIEUX for her grandmother.

Marjane’s awful experiences in Austria, where she slept on the street for a while, and her homecoming to a very restrictive world in Iran are depicted with clarity and suppressed anger, but always with a sly, cheeky sense of humour, and the characters are all beautifully drawn.

In the end this is a hymn to the human spirit, to a young woman who refused to let fundamentalism destroy her love of life.

****4 STARS.
DAVID STRATTON. AT THE MOVIES.

Trailer: