Director: Maryam Keshavarz (USA). Year of Release: 2023
Manhattan, Hallowe’en. The opening titles tell us that we are roughly in the present, although the mobile phones everyone use would locate things maybe 20 years ago. A woman is walking along the street carrying a surfboard and wearing a “burka-kini” – top half burkha, bottom half bikini. She enters a house and we see that it’s a fancy dress party. After she wins the “best costume” prize, she cops off with someone she assumes is a drag queen, though they are inept at removing bras.
It turns out that Leila’s new romantic partner is far worse than a drag queen. Maximillian is an actor who is playing the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He just came to the party direct from Broadway. Tom Byrne, who plays Maximillian is channelling his inner Hugh Grant as if his life depends on it. This is not a good thing. I mean, Hugh Grant is irritating enough in most of his films (we’ll give him a pass for Paddington 2), but at least he is him, if you see what I mean.
Leila’s brief liaison with Maximillian is presumably the result of her being on the rebound – having just broken up with her wife, Elena. Leila blames everyone but herself for the split – most notably Elena, and Leila’s mother Shirin. If it weren’t for Other People, Leila would just be an emancipated modern multicultural US-American who gets to celebrate, and gain presents for, both Thanksgiving and Newroz. For now, Leila is exploiting her family history to boost her career as a film maker.
Shirin works in Real Estate as a realtor, where she has developed a sideline in helping “ethnic” customers. We are initially encouraged to see Shirin as the main source of her daughter’s repression. We will be later asked to revise our opinion, but this is a film sees working for Big Landlords and getting clients to pay extra rent as being the realisation of the American Dream, and not a clear indication that Shirin is, or at least has become, part of the Problem.
Peace is kept by Shirin’s mother Mamanjoon. There is one particular scene (mini-spoilers alert) which might determine how much sympathy you have for the film. When Leila announces she is pregnant from her liaison with Maximiliian, Mamanjoon asks her why she didn’t just take it up the arse. Is this a hilarious satire on sexual hypocrisy or a cheap laugh at the stigma of old people talking about sex? I tend to the latter explanation, but if you laughed, there’s plenty more like this.
We skip between dates and time zones, including a clip of Leila as a girl smuggling cassettes of Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson and Prince into Iran. This does result in a great dance sequence of locals dancing along to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” in Farsi. But is is a reflection on the film’s understanding of “subversive Western culture” that Leila is not smuggling the Velvet Underground, Hole, and the Dead Kennedys. A little bit of danger is allowed, but please not too much.
There are some very perceptive works by women who have fled Iran to the West – from Marjane Satrapi’s Perseopolis to the comedy and books of Shaparak Khorsandi. Other Western Muslim women like Nida Manzoor (We Are Lady Parts, Polite Society), have been able to look at the conflicted experience of women who are patronised by both Western and Eastern men with wit and perception. I was looking forward to seeing some of this in The Persian Version.
Unfortunately, rather than examining the contradictions of women who are both Western and Eastern, The Persian Version clearly comes down on one side of the argument. Although Leila constantly says that she is “too Iranian in America, too American in Iran”, she is fully integrated, and rarely encounters actual racism apart from one early scene where classmates in her US school call her a “smelly terrorist” while those in Iran call her a “smelly imperialist”.
After this, Iran, and life in Iran is reduced to persecution by Mullahs which is contrasted with US freedom. Early on, Leila says “I come from two cultures that used to be really in love with each other. But Iran and American broke up.” Can we quickly parse this statement please? Leila seems to be saying that for a certain historical period, her US-American and Iranian sides were in perfect harmony. Then the repressive Shah was deposed and everything went sour.
We see the orientation of the film in Leila’s choice of fancy dress for the opening scene – the US-style bikini is treated as fun, whereas the burka she wears on her top half feels ominously oppressive. Rather than being asked to choose between US and Iranian repression, the choice which we are offered is between Cyndi Lauper and repressive fundamentalism. And we’d all go for Cyndi in those circumstances, wouldn’t we?
None of this would matter if the film were just a little funnier. But because it is reluctant to examine the contradictions, it rarely offers any depth. Leila’s eight brothers are indistinguishable professionals (apart from the loser drug addict who the family whitewashes away), who appear together at family occasions. This could be a decent joke about how sisters are usually presented in films, but it just makes any scenes in which they appear a little superficial and unnecessary.
Towards the end of the film, Shirin scolds her daughter: “You’re getting sentimental. Just like those Americans.” The trouble is, that The Persian Version is a little too US-American, and keeps drowning in sentimentality. For all the occasional cynicism of some of the characters, it is, ultimately, a plea for the comfort of family. Most dramatic tension disappears in the writers’ saccharine wish for everything to work out in the end.
I wanted to enjoy The Persian Version more than I actually did. Layla Mobahhadi as Leila is an engaging, vivacious presence. And there are certainly things to enjoy. The film consists of two separate stories – that of Leila, and a flashback of a tragedy experienced by her mother Shirin. Each of these stories is gripping, but the difference in mood between them is just so extreme that putting them together just jars. It would have worked far better as 2 separate shorts.
What could have been a great film ends up being perfectly ok. Which is fine if you want a diverting afternoon, but I think we deserve a little bit more than ok.
CinePhil 