Simple drawings instead of real life actors, a very well-known script (the movie is based on the comic series), the life of a migrant girl. These are the ingredients of the precisely told and yet very touching animated movie Persepolis. Even if you have not read any of the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, even if you are highly sceptic of comics and animated movies in general, even if you do not care much about headscarves and the Middle-East in general – even in spite of all that, you should go and watch this movie. Because it is a great story, told with pictures that make the best of the freedom of animated movies: it does not care about reality as such, instead it focuses on showing how situations feel, how they would look if they were drawn in black and white, like a paper cut. The scences are beautiful, sometimes funny, often tragic.
The only thing which I have missed a bit had to do with my personal reading of the story as such – I missed a bit of reflection about the role of the female protagonist as someone who is very much upper-class in her upbringing and social status. It was not something that was shyly denied or pompously set in scene. However, it was in a way too straight, too un-broken for me. But maybe, perhaps, this is the case because being upper-class comes as a matter of course, not as something special to those who are…
IMDb entry | Trailer