Movie Review: Persepolis

In this age of CGI animation, Pixar and celebrity voiceovers, it's a refreshing surprise to discover that the best animated film of the year so far is not only hand-drawn and black and white, but in French as well. Even Paris-set Ratatouille had the decency to be in English!

Alright, Persepolis isn't really a kids' movie, but it tells a serious story in a hugely entertaining style and will hopefully break through and find a wide audience.

Based on a graphic novel, it's the autobiographical story of Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian woman who spent the first decade of her life living a relatively happy childhood in Tehran. In 1982 she was shipped off to Vienna by her liberal parents, who were worried about the increasingly repressive regime in their homeland...

Persepolis is a masterclass in economic story-telling, that in just over 90 minutes manages to tell not only the story of one woman from childhood to early adulthood, but of an entire country itself. Having Marjane start the film as a little girl means that the adult characters can explain the political situation without it ever seeming like clumsy exposition, and some imaginative animated sequences make it far more than a history lesson.

The balance of humour and more serious subject matter is equally assured. Much of the film is laugh-out-loud funny, and Satrapi and writer-director Vincent Paronnaud manage to find verbal and visual humour in even the darkest of situations.

Those who feel that wading through modern animation is akin to wrestling a giant computerised jellybaby while Mike Myers shouts in Scottish at you will find Perspolis a seriously refreshing change of pace. The animation is stunning, with the contrast of the black and white and occasional flashes of colour serving the story rather than just dazzling the audience.

The film also doesn't offer any of the trite conclusions that you'd expect to find with this sort of thing, and Satrapi clearly remains close to her troubled country despite now living in France.

The only downside is that Sean Penn performs the voice of Marjane's father for the English language dub. If you can, seek out the far superior French-language version, because if there's one man alive who could drain the humour from a film like this it's that po-faced buffoon.