Evolving a tumultuous life into a graphic novel and then an animated film is what makes "Persepolis" so refreshingly unexpected. It's also what makes this autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, the book's author and the film's director, so much more creatively significant.
Unlike the animated gloss and glamour of industry big shots like Pixar and Dreamworks Animation ("Ratatouille" and "Shrek" are, of course, brilliant, but in very different ways), "Persepolis" thrives on its ability to tell the story with marked simplicity.
The film centers on the life of Iranian-born Satrapi and her leftist, communist-leaning family living amid the turmoil of Iran's Islamic Revolution in the 1970s and '80s. The simple black and white 2-D-animation (with various shades of gray in-between) is a dramatic departure from today's computer generated 3-D effects and works to a wonderful result.
It's a French animated film, but thankfully, instead of appealing to the subtitle-phobia of the U.S. public, Sony Pictures Classics let the film's original voice actors remain.
The dialogue is snappy and intelligent, as adult Satrapi (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) narrates her life story from the departures terminal of Orly Airport in Paris. She looks back at her life in Tehran as a precocious troublemaker of a child who learns to despise the repressive regime of the Shah and embrace the forbidden communist ideology.
Her young age does not impede outspokenness, but more or less encourages it. As a preteen, she illegally purchases Iron Maiden tapes on Tehran's streets and dons a jacket over her head scarf and long dress that says, in handwritten script, "Punk is not Dead."
This dangerous philosophy to do and say what she thinks creates a precarious situation for her family, who has already seen its share of death and imprisonment under the Shah's (and later the Mullahs') iron fist. Her mother (voiced by the superb Catherine Deneuve) and father (Simon Abkarian) are wonderfully supportive of their daughter, but after Marjane stirs trouble and incites revolution in her classroom, they fear for her life.
Marjane's grandmother (voiced with hard-nosed sass and wit by the legendary Danielle Darrieux) cares for Marjane all the while, supporting her revolutionary and outspoken tendencies and challenging her granddaughter to test the limits of the new brand of extreme Islam.
However, Marjane proves to be too much of a liability, and to save their daughter from an almost certain fate, her parents send her to a French school in Vienna. Sad to say goodbye to her homeland, but safe in a place indifferent to the outspoken, Marjane starts to make her home in Europe. Her time there is a series of highs and lows, as she encounters first boyfriends, the Austrian punk scene, crazy landlords and insensitive Viennese who refuse to admit their bias against her Iranian heritage.
It's a constant battle for Marjane as she tries to straddle her life as an Iranian and her desire to be free in the cruel, less personal lands of Europe.
It's a wonderfully complex film for a relatively simple presentation. The juxtaposition that Marjane faced 30 years ago between a repressive Islamic society and a cold West seems just as relevant today. And for many, the film serves as a good primer on the tumultuous times Iran has faced in recent history.
Satrapi (along with co-director Vincent Paronnaud) has crafted a wonderfully imaginative story that takes us on a visual romp through a less-than-ordinary life. Even with all its gloss and glamour, "Ratatouille" faces some stiff competition in "Persepolis" when the Oscars roll around Feb. 24.
