Persepolis: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 95 minutes, not rated. In French with English subtitles.

Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's "Persepolis" ushers audiences into two colliding worlds.

The first is an arresting, black-and-white world animated with the grimness of abstract noir (color is used only fleetingly in this movie). The second is Satrapi's real-life story of growing up in Iran and Europe during the late 1970s and early 1990s, which gives life to the film's 2-D animation in ways that make for a strange yet fascinating brand of pop art.

The story and the vehicle for telling it complement each other so beautifully, they work to make this one of 2007's most unique, satisfying movies. What Satrapi and Paronnaud have achieved is animation lifted to its highest, most cerebral form, with the medium used as a tool to generate the sort of off-beat, dreamlike mood live-action would find difficult to match.

Based on Satrapi's graphic novels, the film is a coming-of-age story for adults that follows headstrong Marjane (voice of Chiara Mastroianni) through an extended period of civil and personal unrest. Her disillusionment, rebellion and disappointment all come to a head because of the chaos created by the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.

To a certain degree, Marjane's cynical worldview and her dark sense of humor help her to assemble what can't rationally be assembled. Still, even that ability can take her only so far. Born to a cosmopolitan family, she is a feminist growing up in a country that came to shun Western ideals after the fall of the Shah and which repressed its people, especially women, as a result. Every breath within her lives to move forward and be an individual, but how can she do so when the country she loves is now determined to hold her back?

Helping her through her challenging early years are her supportive mother (Catherine Deneuve) and father (Simon Abkarian), as well as her savvy grandmother (Danielle Darrieux) and an imprisoned uncle (Francois Jerosme). In spite of their guidance, Marjane remains a loose cannon, falling into the prickly folds of punk rock and removing her veil when the wrong people are watching. This worries her parents to the point that they exile her to Austria, where she attends school and becomes as much a stranger in that land as her own land has become to her.

As the years pass, "Persepolis" reveals an undercurrent of sadness that's bracing. The questions the movie poses are humbling, none more so than the idea that sometimes your country no longer can be your home if you radically oppose its views. The direction Iran took essentially exiled Marjane from life, which is the cold truth she must face, though in ways that won't be revealed here.

In the end, what we have here isn't just one of the finest animated movies of 2007, but also one of its best foreign language films. Look for the deserving "Persepolis" to be nominated in the latter category for an Academy Award.

Grade: A-