Persepolis

A graphic film is not something you’d consider to surpass the boundaries of its own artistic or underground scene into the gimmicky market of globalised taste. Graphics of quality and depth now hold a certain nostalgia, however in France, are now a medium that is being rebuffed. “Persepolis”, directed by Vincent Paurronaud and written by its protagonist, Marjane Satrapi, illustrates, in an almost film noir contrast, the rapacious effects of the tumult of Iranian rule. Marjane, a young girl comporting the tactless sensitivity of youth attempts to find an identity in a country deplete of its culture and the liberal freedom of political autonomy. She plays the submissive game of the totalitarian state, casting a veil over her views and the members of her family who come to personify some paradigmatic segment of western thought. She is soon uncovered. In an act of protection, she is sent to Europe, a world that is equally as vacuous in its treatment of difference. It is in this austere intersection of two worlds that Marjane both suffers and finds a sort of resolve from the grey ambiguities of her identity and experience. The ornate simplicity, layered textures and inflexions of her graphic narrating capture a collision of continents, and politics that is all too pertinent and refreshing in light of the worn separations between ‘this’ world and ‘theirs’.