Darbareye Elly - Iranian cinema doesn’t have to be about poverty
{FILM DIARY}
Darbareye Elly (2009, Iran)
Seen: Monday, 26th January 2010
Runtime: 119′
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Golshifteh Farahani
Production House: Dreamlab
Plot: Three Iranian families go out of town for a couple of days to have some fun and introduce Elly (a young teacher) to a recently divorced friend. Everything changes when Elly disappears and no one knows whether she is alive or dead.
Trailer
Impressions In Short
It’s nice to see a good Iranian film about the urban middle class. We get far too few films like that.
More About the Film
It’s a beautifully constructed film and story. Every scene, every line turns out to be important in the end. Very well acted as well. All the relationships in the film are very meticulously drawn.
It’s also very interesting to watch from a cultural perspective. I came out thinking that this could have been a Polish group of friends on holiday. The only difference was that maybe the appropriateness of certain things was considered with a little more attention (should it be a woman or a man who makes this phone call etc.). Muslim countries are usually considered to be chauvinist, but any chauvinism that was shown in this film could have just as easily happened in Poland in a similar situation.
Recommended?
Yes. It is an art film and it is a little slow, but it’s quite gripping. For anyone who likes to find out about other cultures through cinema (as I do) then this is an awesome film to watch.
