Cannes. Persepolis.

"Any stragglers still unconvinced that animation can be an exciting medium for both adults and kids will run out of arguments in the face of Persepolis [site]," proclaims Variety's Lisa Nesselson. "Like the four-volume series of graphic novels on which it's based, this autobiographical tour de force is completely accessible and art of a very high order. First-person tale of congenitally rebellious Marjane Satrapi, who was 8 years old when the Islamic Revolution transformed her native Teheran, boasts a bold lyricism spanning great joy and immense sorrow."

"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," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. "The filmmakers were right to believe that a live-action version of this story would have failed to achieve the universality Persepolis does. (In the department of thankfully avoided horrors, Satrapi has disclosed she was even offered 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."

"Persepolis' main drawback as a piece of cinema is its episodic structure, which makes it feel like a strung-together sequence of autobiographical shorts rather than a film with a dramatic arc," argues Lee Marshall at Screen Daily. That said, "One of the charms of Persepolis, on page and screen, is Satrapi's vein of irony and self-deprecatory humor."

Reuters' Bob Tourtellotte reports that at her press conference, "Satrapi sought to play down Iranian protests over her animated movie Persepolis on Wednesday, asking audiences to focus on its humanity, not its politics."

Update: "As awful as the things that happen in the story are, the viewer is happy to be in its world anyway, because Satrapi is such a companionable guide through it," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "Satrapi's graphic style is simple - some of the early sequences look like Peanuts with headscarves - but it has legs, more than enough to sustain a 96-minute feature."

Updates, 5/24: "Even when the story turns from Iranian political melodrama into more familiar coming-of-age territory, Persepolis never loses its momentum, its sustaining sense of fun or its rapturous hold on the viewer," write Richard and Mary Corliss for Time.

"Lovers of the books will miss certain anecdotes, but the film adds a few film-specific flourishes (an amusing musical sequence scored to 'Eye of the Tiger') to liven up the visuals," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "And if there were any doubts about the movie's ability to stir up feelings of nostalgia or homesickness, there was an Iranian woman sitting beside me sobbing uncontrollably throughout the screening."

"Some audience members thought the film twee, but the filmmakers do a pretty good job of compressing material from multiple volumes, combining gross-out humour with near-gauzy abstraction, and synthesizing a compelling personal story and a salutary political survey," reports the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu.

Update, 5/26: Update, 5/26: "Satrapi's savage attack on life in her native country after the Islamic Revolution has brought an official protest from Iran, claiming that the film's picture of repression and persecution is biased and exaggerated," notes Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times. "Is it? Not by the facts at most westerners' disposal."

Update, 5/31: The Jury Prize is not good news for Mehdi Kalhor, a cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reports the AFP: "Islamophobia in Western drama started in France and producing and highlighting the anti-Iranian film Persepolis in Cannes falls in line with this Islamophobia." Via Movie City News.

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 23, 2007 10:03 AM