Marjane Satrapi - Vincent Paronnaud, Persépolis (2007)

Téhéran 1978. Une fillette grandit dans un contexte familial chaleureux, suivant de près les évènements qui provoquent la chute du Chah. Puis vient le temps des commissaires de la révolution, l'exil en Autriche, les premières amours… Une adaptation de la bd de Marjane Satrapi, Prix du Jury du 60e Festival de Cannes. Marjan Satrapi's International best-selling comic book series Persepolis: The story of a childhood Satrapi's autobiography is the story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. The animated version of this fascinating story was released in June 2007. The work which required nearly a titanic total of 2 Million drawings for the animation was joined by a prestigious cast of French Stars who do the voice overs : Catherine Deneuve, daughter Chiara Mastroiani and veteran French film star Danielle Darrieux.



Téhéran, 1978. Marjane est une petite fille comme les autres qui s'éveille à la vie, s'interroge sur son passé, songe à son avenir. Elle vit cependant une enfance particulière : celle d'une petite-fille d'un des derniers empereurs iraniens, bercée par le marxisme et contrainte de porter le foulard à 9 ans, durant les années qui ont vu la chute du Chah, le triomphe de la révolution islamique et les effets dévastateurs de la guerre en Irak. Menacée pour son intégrité et un peu frondeuse, elle est envoyée par ses parents en Autriche à 13 ans. Marjane se retrouve alors confrontée à une deuxième révolution : celle de son adolescence et des vertiges de l'amour dans un occident libre mais indifférent. C'est par un face-à-face peu ordinaire entre Marx et Dieu que Marjane chassera les démons de notre monde contemporain et donnera un nouveau parfum à sa vie.

The black-and-white animation, highly stylized and two dimensions which doesn't attempt to render the usual cartoon 3-D, summarizes in quick, intelligent flashes, often impressionistic, growing up in Teheran and Vienna from a highly personal point of view. The narrative is as original as the art. The narrator, Marjane Satrapi, only daughter of an educated Teheran couple, first sketches in briefly how the Shah first came to power,only to lose it and have it replaced by the fanatical religious regime of today. Educated in a French school, she and her family are rapidly alienated from the so-called revolution; she is sent to Vienna to continue her education, falls in with a group of punks and eventually returns both depressed and disillusioned to Teheran where, with other university students, she must submit to the rule of extreme Islamists.

The story covers a great deal of ground from the point of view of a young pro-Western culture radical, and is told with humor and intelligence. She laughs at herself as much as at the semi-lunatic Guards of the Revolution.

Satrapi's hold on reality is much strengthened under the influence of her highly honest grandmother who teaches her not co compromise, not to betray and not to give in.

This is no fairy tale with flying horses and beautiful princesses, but a serious, unsentimental and sometimes brutally honest film covering, among other events, the story of the millions of Iranians and Iraqis who died in a now forgotten seven year war around the Persian Gulf.

european-films.net:

Quite simply one of the best book adaptations and animated films to have come out of Europe in recent years, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis is a film experience one is unlikely to forget. The film won a shared Grand Prix at the recent Cannes Film Festival and has already attracted over 700,000 viewers in France since its release three weeks ago. Not bad for an animated film that is mostly in black-and-white, has strong political overtones and is squarely aimed at adults. Equal success should be found on foreign shores, especially with local dubbing, though the voice work of the French cast, including Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve and Danielle Darrieux is exceptional.

The film is an adaptation of a comic book (or "graphic novel") series penned by Marjane Satrapi and based largely on her own experiences as a rebellious young girl growing up in 1970s and 1980s Iran before being sent off "into safety" in Europe. In her life, the growing pains of a free-spirited young girl happen to occur alongside the fall of the Shah’s rule and the Islamic Revolution. With its perfect blend of the personal and the political, Persepolis tells the parallel stories of a girl and a country trying to grow up and find out what’s right for them, though both are often taken hostage by foreign impulses.



• official site of the film: in French: http://www.myspace.com/persepolislefilm in English: http://www.sonyclassics.com/persepolis/
• non-official site of Marjane Satrapi on the film: http://mapage.noos.fr/marjane.persepolis/
• imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_%28film%29 or in French: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pers%C3%A9polis_%28film%29

Download the original cartoon volumes at http://avaxhome.ws/magazines/comics/satrapi-persepolis.html (in English, Spanish or French)