PERSIAN VERSION – Review

Growing up with a foot in two cultures can be a tricky experience, so why not turn it into a comedy? THE PERSIAN VERSION is writer/director Maryam Keshavars’ semi-autobiographical comedy/family drama with a heart, that sets out to do just that. THE PERSIAN VERSION is more irreverently, laugh-out-loud funny than you might expect, but it also contains a moving story about the director’s mother, which almost could have made an epic drama on its own.

The main character in THE PERSIAN VERSION, Leila (Layla Mohammadi), describes herself as too American for Iran and too Iranian for America. American-born but growing up in a very Iranian immigrant family of all boys, with her as the sole daughter, Leila was the disrupter of expectations from the start. Leila doesn’t really get along with her traditional mother Shireen (Niousha Noor) who is dismayed by her daughter, a filmmaker and a free-spirited lesbian, who is rebellious and pretty thoroughly American.

The film has three parts, one in which Leila describes growing up split between “her two countries” and about being anything but the quiet obedient daughter her traditional parents expected, as well as her family of crazy brothers with divergent temperaments. The second half is devoted to her mother’s surprising success story and what really prompted them to leave Iran. And finally, events bring the whole crazy but loving family together.

Throughout the film, Leila narrates her own story, sometimes speaking directly to the camera, which Layla Mohammadi pulls off with both biting humor and much appeal. The first portion of the film tells us about who Leila is and about her rebellious, tomboy childhood. Her mother had longer for a sweet, girly daughter with whom she could share things, so she has been pretty exasperated with the wild daughter actually she got.

Leila’s traditional parents immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1960s, where Leila and some of her brothers were born in Brooklyn. Yet the family actually spent long stretches of time visiting grandparents “back home” in Iran while Leila was growing up. As a curious, rebellious child, Leila was the one who smuggled in forbidden American music and also organized also-forbidden dance parties to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” in the family’s inner courtyard, and other things not considered proper for an Iranian Muslim girl. Leila was even in Iran long enough to attend school there, where schoolmates teased her for being American, while back in the U.S. she was teased for being Iranian.

Leila calls the two countries her parents, like a sort of mixed marriage – until they got divorced. That “divorce” was the Islamic Revolution and Iranian hostage crisis, after the storming of the American embassy in the late ’70s. There was no going back then.

Leila’s father was a doctor but faced obstacles in making a good enough living to support his large family. When a health crisis strikes him, the burden to support the large family is shifted to her mother, who through hard work and determination, found business success.

When the film shifts to the mother’s story, and particularly to events in Iran, things get more dramatic yet director Maryam Keshavarz keeps us hooked on this family tale with unexpected twists, suspense and rich characters. The writer/director handles the whole film skillfully with a masterful hand, pulling the comic side and dramatic one together in the last portion very effectively, for an ending with warmth and celebration.

The charismatic Layla Mohammadi is the acting – and comedy – powerhouse in this film, on screen much of the time, but the other actors create distinct characters as well, particularly Niousha Noor as the mother, Shireen. The actors playing the father and brothers, and later a special non-Iranian friend, all do well too but the story really revolves around the mother-daughter relationship. Some of the elements of this story really happened to Keshavarz (including some unlikely ones) but other parts are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

It all adds up to a movie that is highly entertaining, energetic, funny and always involving, whether it is being silly funny or even heroic, all tied up with a large happy, crazy family at the end, a true crowd-pleaser that won the Audience award at Sundance.

THE PERSIAN VERSION opens Friday, Nov. 3, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema and other theaters nationally.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars