Persepolis.

"At a moment in history where Iran, famously dubbed one-third of an 'Axis of Evil' by Dubya, has again been making headlines as the next country with whom the Republicans wanna preemptively rumble (though the NIE's latest report on its lack of a nuclear weapons program throws this political gambit into a tailspin), Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical and surpassingly exquisite Persepolis, co-written and directed with fellow comic book artist Vincent Paronnaud, is a corrective bomb of beauty launched lovingly into a terrified world," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE. "Based upon Satrapi's likewise superlative graphic novels and detailing her upbringing in Iran and eventual departure to (and return from) Austria amidst the Islamic Revolution, the personal-is-political telling deconstructs the absolute Otherness attributed to Iranians in an era scarred by boys who cry terrorist, even as the film rises to the status of coming-of-age classic."

Updated through 12/24.

"Satrapi and Paronnaud say they were inspired in part by silent-era German Expressionism, which is evident in the film's dynamic gouges of black; some of their most striking scenes are in silhouette, suggesting Lotte Reiniger's lacework-detailed Orientalist animation of the 20s," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice, where he also notes that "many a scene open-ends onto a lingeringly poignant coda (the emotion, I should say, never feels chintzy)."

For New York's David Edelstein, Persepolis "feels as if it had jumped right from the page to the screen. And since the novels feel as if they had jumped right from Satrapi's head to the page, the immediacy is startling. If only The Kite Runner could have been freed from its clunky realism!"

"I found it, if anything, too simple," sniffs Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "I was left with the nagging, if ungallant, impression that I had been flipping through a wipe-clean board book entitled Miffy and Friends Play with Islamic Fundamentalism."

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes, Toronto and New York.

Updates, 12/19: "The variety-platter structure is entertaining but scattered; Satrapi gives us history lessons, first loves, human faces of the Iraq-Iran conflict and the occasional Western culture reference (little Marjane buys Sabbath tapes on the black market), and all of it stays on the film's gorgeous surface," writes Jesse Hassenger in the L Magazine. "Despite its vague present-day relevance, Persepolis turns out to best address another, less hot-button cultural concern: the idiosyncratic power of hand-drawn, '2-D' animation."

Michael Guillén talks with Parannaud.

Updates, 12/20: "Satrapi is eager to make another movie with Paronnaud, but after pounding the promotion trail for weeks, she says, 'My soul is poor. I'm empty. I need to lie down and read, sit on my balcony, look, smoke my cigarette and think. When I have a rich soul again, then I will be generous enough to write another story.'" But as Ella Taylor discovers in the LA Weekly, she's not all talked out yet.

"Satrapi (both storyteller and star) makes an engaging memoirist," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Since the movie remains within the confines of her selective recollections, it never becomes dogmatic, nor does it present clear-cut alternatives to religious fundamentalism. Satrapi leaves those questions aside, settling to champion the perseverance of the human mind."

Erica Abeel talks with Satrapi and Paronnaud for indieWIRE.

Updates, 12/23: "When I first saw Jafar Panahi's Offside, I was startled by its combination of feminism and Iranian nationalism," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "Persepolis shows that one can rebel against Iranian misogyny without capitulating to 'Axis of Evil'-style rhetoric or idealizing the West."

"Persepolis doesn't pretend to have grand answers about Iran or geopolitics; it tells a very simple story about an ordinary girl caught in extraordinary circumstances," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "Yet there's nothing ordinary about Satrapi's skills as an artist or storyteller, and her film does justice to both of those gifts."

Geoff Boucher talks Satrapi for the Los Angeles Times.

Update, 12/24: Satrapi's a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Posted by dwhudson at December 18, 2007 1:16 PM