PERSEPOLIS Tributes

Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical novels detail her upbringing in Tehran from the overthrow of the Shah through the years of Ayatollah Khomeni’s Islamic fundamentalist regime and the Iran-Iraq war.

Her gripping personal journey from childhood through adolescence, followed by her sexual awakening and an unhappy marriage, has been transformed by Satrapi and co-director Vincent Pasrranaud into a series of animated comic book images that provide a strangely magical viewing experience . The narrative, both topical and extremely personal, creates an emotional terrain that’s at once poignant and humorous. The young heroine is encouraged by her loving parents to flee Tehran for Vienna, but life there is bitters – homesickness propels her to don a veil and return to Iran. As she sits in a European airport watching planes arrive and depart, she confronts her state of exile – both literal and subjective – and her complex feelings for her homeland.

Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni and Danielle Darrieux provide the expressive emotional voices in a film that mixes personal reminiscences and political history in a way unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.