Movie Review: About Elly (2009)

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Given its potential to ignite the creative spark of an infinite number of narrative possibilities, a professor once told me that the only prompt a writer would ever need was to place two characters in a room together, wherein one wants to stay and the other desires to leave.

Using this deceptively simple premise as a slow-burning jumping-off point roughly one hour into this character-driven mystery, in About Elly what begins in the same vein as Kasdan's The Big Chill morphs into something much closer to L'avventura by Antonioni.

At its core a like-minded tale of two female friends bound together in a push/pull relationship, in this understated masterpiece, Oscar winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) multiplies the aforementioned two individuals by two cars of people vacationing together on an ill-fated weekend by the sea.

A haunting film of ambiguities bursting with secrets and lies, Elly makes clever use of foreshadowing both in its subtitled dialogue and classically composed cinematography that plays much better not only the second time around but also on a much larger screen.

Daring to fill the frame with people as far as the eye can see (as opposed to methodically introducing its large cast of characters one-by-one), Elly respects our intelligence right from the start.

Hoping to fix up her daughter's beautiful teacher with a recently divorced friend visiting from Germany, the scheming, if well-intentioned Sepideh tells a handful of white lies in order to see if love between her friends could potentially thrive.

Without any idea just how badly her plan will go awry, Sepideh continues to push the two together after early excitement and exasperation gives way to a few false starts.

A stranger in the midst of a tight-knit group, although Sepideh argues that "to know Elly is to love Elly," just how well anyone knows her (or one another for that matter) is suddenly brought to light when Elly vanishes in thin air after she's last seen (symbolism alert!) flying a kite.

Deflecting guilt and suspicion over whether a woman chose to leave or was forced to stay, as the remaining characters begin turning on each other, secrets come tumbling out.

Made in 2009 and finally released stateside in 2015, admittedly the quality of Netflix's About Elly stream does date the image slightly.

However, much like Farhadi's Douglas Sirkian inspired high gloss soap The Past, given the way that Elly draws upon everything from '40s women's weepies to existential Noir via Preminger's Laura (as well as its most overt inspiration of Antonioni), the aged look works for this instantly addictive and emotionally thrilling timeless tale.

Produced supremely well and seemingly on the cheap, About Elly proves once again how little budget, A-listers, and effects matter when it comes to crafting a masterful work in any language. Even if it's as simple as the debate to stay or go (and just as my professor predicted nearly two decades ago), story is still king.

Text ©2016, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: The Past (2013)

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Just because this fleeting thing we call time marches on, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we move on with it as sometimes we remain emotionally, psychologically, romantically, spiritually – even somewhat physically – stuck in moments of the past.

And no film captures this idea better than the Cannes Ecumenical Jury Prize winner The Past which introduces us to an extended group of people that are making plans and doing everything they can to move forward beyond various life-changing events (some public, some private) that have kept parts of them forever bookmarked in time and place.

Cinematically reminiscent of both 1950s Douglas Sirk movies and Three Colors era Krzysztof Kieślowski, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s riveting follow-up to his 2012 Oscar, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award winner A Separation centers on the dramatic fallout that occurs with regard to another separated couple.

Hoping to get remarried to her new boyfriend (Tahar Rahim), a French mother of two named Marie (played by Cannes award winning Best Actress Bérénice Bejo) invites her estranged Iranian husband Ahmad (Ali Mostaffa) to Paris to grant her a divorce – completely unprepared for the collision of past and present that coincides with her plans for the future.

An intelligently crafted soap opera, The Past is as riveting as an Agatha Christie mystery due to the intricacy with which Farhadi reveals one emotionally devastating puzzle piece after another and allows us to continually rearrange the evidence to create a constantly changing portrait of an extended family.

Yet even when he threatens to go too far off the melodramatic deep end, writer/director Farhadi manages to keep things universally relatable against all odds.

Furthermore, unlike far too many American dramas that tell you how to feel with song cues, everything is left open to psychological interpretation… including the possible implication of the film’s blink-and-you-missed-it final shot that all count on your participation (and thankfully filmmaker commentary on the luxe Blu-ray release) to help clarify.

Throughout the deeply engrossing film, we’re invited to not only speculate as to the real reasons behind the tension between the children and adults in the film (who are often so much wiser than their parents) but also place ourselves in the unenviable shoes of its complex characters who go through the emotional wringer from start to finish.

While thankfully it does provide a number of answers, one of the most fascinating things about The Past is that the characters – and by extension the viewer – is then faced with the prospect of what (if anything) to do with the information.

Easily the most impressive Sirkian adult foreign drama I’ve seen since I first discovered the films of Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, After the Wedding), while unfortunately The Past failed to receive an Academy Award nomination for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film, it is both vastly superior to and infinitely more relatable than this year’s Italian surrealist winner The Great Beauty.

 

The type of work wherein the less you know going in the better, The Past may be a sophisticated Iranian-French coproduction but it could just as well have taken place in any country.

Yet fortunately because of the origins of its director, The Past has helped shine much needed light on the talented directors of the Iranian filmmaking community, which has sadly been overshadowed for decades due to political unrest.

Now hopefully thanks to present hits – from great Iranian helmers of the past like Children of Heaven’s Majid Majidi to masters of the future like Asghar Farhadi – Iranian cinema won’t remain a secret for long as time marches on.   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.