Berlinale. "About Elly"

By David Hudson on 02/08/2009

Think of Iranian cinema and you may be thinking of ascetic realism or schmaltzy realism, but not usually the sort of realism peopled with characters most westerners would recognize as pretty much like themselves. "Persepolis" might have counted as the exception that proves the rule if it were indeed an Iranian film, as opposed to a film made by an Iranian in France filtering a cast of liberal, well-educated, borderline secular Iranians through memories a couple of decades old. Still, you could sense in many reviews appearing in the States and Europe a yearning to pass out "Persepolis" DVDs like leaflets, all but pleading, "Yes, the extremists make the news, but there's a quiet class of folks over there just like us - let's not 'obliterate' them."

Asghar Farhadi's "About Elly" may spark similar sentiments if it's ever picked up for distribution beyond the festival circuit. A set of couples, all friends during their university days and now in their mid-to-late 20s, takes a trip from Tehran to the seaside and everything's going swimmingly until something horrible happens. What's begun as a breezy holiday frolic turns into Sartre on the beach: the first tentative accusations quickly evolve into a full-blown blame game that degenerates into a poisonous round of self-propagating deceptions. Turns out, hell is other people.

In the latter stages of this nightmare, a few of the characters - the men, mostly - begin acting in ways - towards the women, mostly - that may have some western viewers taking a step or two back away from that just-like-us commitment they've likely made in the first hour. That's the challenge I find most fascinating in "About Elly," a challenge well worth grappling with. At any rate, the film's on my shortlist of the best I've seen at this year's Berlinale so far.

"One of the most remarkable Iranian films to surface in the last few years, 'About Elly' is a small but compelling ensemble piece of surprising depth," writes Lee Marshall in Screen. "It's one of those rare films that can be read on one level purely as a satisfying drama, but which also has a rich, independent inner life, centred on big questions about right and wrong, social coercion and the lies people tell themselves and each other."

In Variety, though, Alissa Simon finds it "talky" and "overlong," but for Deborah Young, writing in Hollywood Reporter, it's "taut" and "involving." In other words, mileage varies.

Film-Zeit collects reviews from the German press.

[Photo: "About Elly," DreamLab Films, 2009]

Tags: Asghar Farhadi, Berlinale 2009, Iranian Cinema