"Rights," wrongs, and a welcome salvage: Asghar Farhadi's early gem, ABOUT ELLY

Those of us who do not travel to film festivals have been waiting to see ABOUT ELLY since 2009, when the film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Thanks to issues of "rights," this movie has remained in "American limbo" since then. Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, who went on to give us the Oscar-winning A Separation and then The Past, the film is at last being distributed by The Cinema Guild and hits the U.S. with its theatrical premiere this Wednesday, April 8, here at Film Forum in New York City, before arriving in another 16 cities across the country, beginning in May.

In addition to being, for this viewer at least, the best of Farhadi's three films that I've seen, About Elly also gives us further clues as to why this filmmaker, shown at right, is so able to work seemingly unmolested by censorship, house arrest and the like -- unlike, say, Jafar Panahi. Farhadi is one hell of a lot subtler than Panahi, as well as much more dramatically compelling in his stories.

The filmmaker shows us what look like middle-class (tending toward the upper) characters, who rarely if at all appear to be religious and who would -- except for their language and the headdress of the women -- be nearly indistinguishable from those of many European countries and, hell, even from us here in the USA. No wonder Farhadi's films are so popular with the cinematic elite of the western world.

Further, the concerns of these characters mirror so many of our own -- from the usual man/ women relations to child-rearing and -schooling to setting up one of their good friends with a possible "significant other." More important, where fundamentalism is concerned, whatever problems these people have can easily be attributed to their own faults and misdeeds, particularly those of the women on view -- something that would of course appeal to a fundamentalist/ patriarchal society like Iran (and OK, a few other countries, too.)

And yet I don't believe for a minute that Farhadi truly feels this way himself. Look at what happens in A Separation or About Elly (The Past is set in France and so wiggles out a bit from my theory), and you see people so constricted by their society and its mores that they have no genuine control of their lives -- except by towing the party line.

When something mysterious and possibly fatal happens in About Elly -- the sudden disappearance by the sea of one of the main characters, which will put movie buffs in mind of L'Avventura -- watch what occurs between a husband and his wife, the latter of whom turns out to know much more than he (or we) realized about Elly, and who has kept these facts from the rest of the group. What we get is sudden anger, then verbal and physical abuse. To us this may be shocking, but you just know it will please those religious censors.

About Elly seamlessly weaves its exposition into smart, believable dialog between these friends as they head out and arrive at their seaside week-end away. We learn tons of information about all of them, piecemeal, and over the long haul. What we learn about Elly makes us concerned and uneasy, though we won't understand why for quite some time.

How these people handle themselves, their friends, their children, smacks so thoroughly of the way we all do the same -- with affection and hypocrisy, lies both white and black, trying to balance self-interest with reputation. The big difference here is the society under which the characters must live. And that, to Farhadi's great credit, changes everything -- for everyone, including especially Elly.

Finally it seems, almost everything here is a lie, thanks to a culture based on them -- due of course to that exquisite combination of faith, religion and political power. If the shy school-teacher Elly at first seems to be the outsider, by the finale it is difficult  not to see every character as somehow "outside" the norm -- or would be, if the truth were to come out.

As a filmmaker, Farhadi balances visuals and dialog extremely well. He gives his cast all the room they need, and each comes across with a beautifully specific performance, while blending seamlessly into the ensemble. I am not going to list them all because each is as good as the next. And several cast members -- women and men -- are exquisitely beautiful, to boot. The filmmaker's final image, by the way, is a great one.

About Elly -- running almost exactly two hours, in Persian (with a bit of German) and translated with English subtitles -- opens this Wednesday, April 8th at New York City's Film Forum. You can see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, by clicking here and scrolling down a bit.

Maryam Keshavarz's CIRCUMSTANCE: the Iranian "entitled" want some "freedom"

The wealthy family at the center of Maryam Keshavarz's quivering, queasy-making movie, CIRCUMSTANCE, would probably protest my use of the word entitled in the headline.And that's all right. (The entitled, after all, are those welfare queens and sick old seniors burying the U.S. deeper in debt, right?) The filmmaker herself, pictured below, might take umbrage, too, although I suspect she knows very well that her movie is mostly about Iran's entitled young people -- and their "friends" -- as they explore the limits of freedom in a fascist state enveloped by the burka.

How come our girls are not often seen in that partcular item of clothing? That's part of the entitlement. This is mostly all they know, and  you can't blame a novice filmmaker for showing us what she knows -- particularly when it is this exotic to foreign eyes.

Once  you get past the exoticism, however -- and this may be hard for some Americans and Western Europeans because it deals in forbidden sexuality (lesbianism!) in a Muslim country, and is handled with a good deal of artful flair -- you are left with a tale of youth under the thumb: of parent, brother, and government.

We've seen that tale told countless times on-screen, but because the Arab spring -- real or hyphed -- is so with us of late, the film often takes on an immediacy that is difficult to shake. Plus, the beautiful leading ladies (Nikohl Boosheri, above, left, and Sarah Kazemy, above, right), as well as the talented and broodingly hot young actor (Reza Sixo Safai, below), who essays the role of the brother, are all so visual-friendly, we could look at them till the cows come home.

Ms Keshavaz tell her small tale circumspectly and ripely. An exquisitely realized scene in the music room of a grand house sets the pace and place of the film quite beautifully. There is a visual rapture that the filmmaker brings to her treatment of, in particular, memory and attraction that makes her movie unusually vivid. Her camera lingers on the girls and their skin, at all angles, that is nearly soft, soft-core.

An interesting cultural/political conversation takes place among the kids in a videoroom in back of a barbershop, and later we see them "relaxing" at a rave. (Compare these kids with those Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows about Persian Cats.) The filmmaker allows us to see what repression does to the male of this culture, too, as the line "Give me you foot!" resonates on a level you would not have imagined possible.

At times the film seems to be asking the viewer, not to mention the culture here, to rethink what is sacred and what is profane. Brother Mehran, a kind of sick, avenging angel will no doubt stand in for what is "sacred" in fundamentalist mind but what is most profane in that of the humanist/feminist. In any case, the filmmaker clearly means him to be the villain of the year, and the actor more than rises to the occasion.

In both Mehran and his sister Atafeh (Ms Boosheri), the film finds its explicit critique of the entitled. Neither is good for anything much. Mehran, who might have made an acccomplished musician, moves from drug rehab into a sick, violent religious fervor, while Atafeh, fiery and disobedient,can do no more than finally subject her best friend and great love to a life of living hell.

Circumstance, from Roadside Attractions (running time 108 minutes) opened thus past Friday in the Los Angeles and New York City areas.  Click here to see complete city and theater listings..