Animation gives Iranian politics a personal edge

By Kirk Honeycutt

CANNES, France (Hollywood Reporter) - Discussions might grow heated after the premiere of "Persepolis." But those discussions will focus more on the movie's politics than its art.

"Persepolis" is an animated feature by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud based on Satrapi's graphic novel about her growing up in Mullah-ridden Iran during the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. The young woman, who now lives in Paris, paints a grim picture, one familiar to those of us in the West but one that many Iranians and Islamic fundamentalists will no doubt vehemently reject.

The drawings themselves are plain, generalized and almost entirely in black-and-white. Perhaps Satrapi and Paronnaud feared that if the animation were more vital and realistic, the film would become too cartoonish and vulgar. Perhaps they're right. But as animation, "Persepolis" is fairly uninteresting, its characters' facial features not conveying much individuality.

Satrapi's dramatic young life so far has been anything but uninteresting. The film should attract those interested in women's issues and politics in specialty venues. But Sony Pictures Classics will have to market hard to reach out to adult moviegoers beyond those categories in North America.

Satrapi -- called Marjane in the film and voiced by Chiara Mastroianni -- is at a Paris airport, thinking back on her life, starting as a child under the Shah of Iran. While the country is modernized and Westernized, changes that are met with much approval by Marjane, her family chafes under the dictatorship. Many of her family members are imprisoned.

The glorious days of the revolution are brief before Islamic law cracks down on improper -- read Western -- behavior and fashions. The film wrings wry humor from the black market that young Marjane frequents to get tapes of Iron Maiden and cosmetics. During the eight-year war with Iraq, which ground up 1 million lives, the government cracks down further on dissent, executing thousands of political opponents.

Marjane's mom (voiced by Mastroianni's mother, Catherine Deneuve) and dad (Simon Abkarian) send her to Vienna to study but really to escape, as she proves to be "just like her uncle," a rebellious personality jailed by both the Shah and the mullahs. In Austria, she indulges in Western "decadence" -- alcohol, cigarettes and sex. She experiences first love and its disappointment. A second love's bitter aftermath throws her into deep depression and leaves her homeless for a while.

She begs her parents to let her return to Tehran, but the tyrannical restrictions on women's clothing and all social behavior plunge her into another depression. She marries her boyfriend so they can be together outside of her house, and the marriage is a failure. This brings about her decision to head for Paris and the life of an exile. But freedom has its price.

The film has many wonderful details, such as Marjane's grandmother (the great Danielle Darrieux) placing jasmine flowers inside her bra each morning so she will smell sweet and fresh. Or the malevolent security forces filled with young men with abiding hatred for women. Or Marjane's nighttime conversations with God and Karl Marx, deities who both fail her at times.

The filmmakers were right to believe that a live-action version of this story would have failed to achieve the universality that "Persepolis" does. (Filed in the department of thankfully avoided horrors, Satrapi has disclosed that she was even offered a deal for a movie that would have starred Jennifer Lopez and Brad Pitt as her parents.) Animation allows any viewer to experience the story not as an exotic tale but as something happening to a person with whom we can readily identify.

Cast:

Marjane: Chiara Mastroianni

Tadji: Catherine Deneuve

Grandmother: Danielle Darrieux

Ebi: Simon Abkarian

Uncle Anouche: Francois Jerosme

Director-screenwriters: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud; Based on the graphic novel by: Marjane Satrapi; Art director: Marc-Anthony Robert, Xavier Rigault; Animators: Marc Jousset, Christian Desmares; Production designer: Marisa Musy; Music: Olivier Bernet; Animation coordinator: Christian Desmares; Editor-compositor: Stephane Roche.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter