An uneasy Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti) is hiding something in Asghar Farhadi’s shattering ABOUT ELLY
ABOUT ELLY (DARBÂREYE ELI) (Asghar Farhadi, 2009)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
April 8-21, 12:45, 3:15, 6:45, 9:15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.cinemaguild.com
“A bitter ending is better than an endless bitterness,” Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini) tells Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti) in Asghar Farhadi’s shattering, masterful 2009 drama, About Elly. Iranian writer-director Farhadi, whose A Separation was named Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Oscars — the film also earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay — won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2009 Berlinale for About Elly, which also nabbed Best Picture at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. But rights issues have held up its U.S. theatrical release, depriving American audiences of a chance to see the work. Now that the film is finally opening here, beginning a two-week run at Film Forum on April 8 in a new 35mm print, the story of the film’s distribution is no longer bitter, but the searing tale itself couldn’t be more harrowingly acerbic. A group of upper-middle-class law school friends have come to a Caspian Sea villa from Tehran for a getaway weekend organized by Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), who has brought along Elly, her daughter’s teacher, as a potential love match for the recently divorced Ahmad, who has been living in Germany. Because of a scheduling snafu, they have to stay in a seaside house in desperate need of renovation, but the friends just go with the flow, singing and dancing and making the best of the awkward situation. But the playful atmosphere turns sour when tragedy strikes, leaving everyone to reexamine who they are.
A group of friends has to face some hard truths during vacation gone terribly wrong
About Elly is a gripping, deeply thoughtful, and intensely intelligent exploration of class, romance, responsibility, culture, family, and, perhaps most of all, honesty in contemporary Iranian society. Although the film evokes such works as Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura and François Ozon’s Under the Sand, Farhadi (The Past, Fireworks Wednesday) infuses it with a profound sense of realism, involving the audience in its intricate, intimate mystery. You’ll feel like you’re on the beach with the friends, facing the same agonizing decisions. Shot in a naturalistic style by cinematographer Hossein Jafarian, About Elly takes place in a ramshackle vacation house, designed by Farhadi, that doubles for the characters’ psyche, with its broken windows, stuck doors, and lack of privacy. The scene in which a young boy goes missing in the ocean is as terrifying as it is heart-rending, a breathless extended sequence of events that feels like it will never let up. And indeed, the powerful emotions continue through the rest of the film — and will stay with you long after. The outstanding cast also includes Mani Haghighi as Amir, Sepideh’s husband; Peyman Moaadi and Merila Zarei as Peyman and Shohreh, the parents of the boy; and Ahmad Mehranfar and Rana Azadivar as another couple caught up in the tragedy. Fingers are pointed, bonds are tested, and relationships are fractured forever in Farhadi’s exquisite jewel of a film.