THE PERSIAN VERSION - Mark Reviews Movies

The Persian Version, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 26, 2023

The Persian Version isn't writer/director Maryam Keshavarz's first movie, but this semi-autobiographical effort certainly has the air of a debut. That's to the filmmaker's credit, since there are moments here that feel alive with some experimentation of narrative and style, but it's also the result of how disjointed this story, which spans several decades and a couple generations in the lives of an Iranian American family, is.

Keshavarz is determined to give an expansive sense of this family, apparently based on her own—if the preface that this is based on a true story is to be accepted, despite the hedging use of "sort of" to qualify that description. There's Leila (Layla Mohammadi), our filmmaker protagonist who has hit a personal and professional slump during the 2000s in New York City. There's her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor), an immigrant from Iran who disapproves of Leila's life—especially the fact that her daughter dated, married, and divorced a woman.

The cultural and generational clash between the two women is at the center of this story at first. However, the most daring part of a story that otherwise doesn’t dare too much is how the daughter decides to try to understand her mother, even though said mother seems to have no interest in attempting to understand her own daughter. It's an inherently generous move on Keshavarz's part, especially since so much of the initial tale is caught up in Leila's existing and mounting problems.

That generosity has a stopping point, though, and it is with these two characters. That's fine, except that it's not the end of the extensive cast who have parts to play within this story. There's also Leila's father Ali (Bijan Daneshmand), a former doctor whose life and career have been on hold because of a debilitating heart attack some years prior. In the present day, the story revolves around Ali having a heart transplant, which forces Shireen to into more contact with her estranged daughter than she has had in years.

Leila isn't the only estranged sibling, either, because there's also Vahid (Parsa Kaffash), who has had issues with drug addiction, leading Shireen to essentially disown him for a long while (There's another reason, apparently, but that's not revealed until much later), but is now in recovery and about to marry a nice woman. Add to this the fact that these two aren't the only siblings—not to mention other extended family members in the past and present—who have some sort of role here, and it becomes obvious pretty quickly that Keshavarz has loaded her story with so many characters that the majority of them will only exist in broad strokes in the movie.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that the narrative never quite finds its specific, narrow footing until the back end. That's when everything else falls by the wayside for the focus to turn to a Shireen's past—both during her early years as an immigrant and as a younger woman (played by Kamand Shafieisabet) in Iran. Once that—as well as Leila's active efforts to understand and sympathize with her mother's past plights and how those have defined who she is now—takes over, everything before it feels more chaotic than merely unfocused.

Keshavarz's in-narrative excuse for that approach isn't too convincing, either. Basically, it's Leila's story of trying to write a new movie, after hitting a wall following the divorce and having a one-night stand with Max (Tom Byrne), which results in her becoming pregnant. If that last detail seems important, it is, to be sure, but the story is already so busy with its other details—establishing the family that will mostly exist in the backdrop, laying the foundation for the mother-daughter relationship, giving us the whole notion that Leila is basically writing the movie we're watching—that Leila's own story comes across as an afterthought.

There's simply too much going on here for any particular element to have much of an impact. Leila's biographical beats, which involve her traveling back and forth between the United States and Iran as a child (and being ostracized in each place because of her connection to the other), are fascinating, but all of that transforms into the almost sitcom-like complications of bumping into her ex in public, being pregnant, and introducing Max, who wants to be involved, to her family.

Eventually, Leila's own story doesn't even register once Shireen, who becomes the family breadwinner after her husband's medical troubles, takes over the story. By the time the narrative jumps back to Shireen's youth in Iran, the whole enterprise takes on an entirely different tone and purpose—albeit richer and more appreciated ones, because of the newfound sense of focus in the material.

Ultimately, The Persian Version doesn't ever convey a clear idea of the story it is trying or wants to tell until near the end. That comes with a feeling of freedom in terms tone, humor, and storytelling, of course, but the cost, perhaps, is best exemplified by the surprising emotional impact of the movie's final beats. By then, Keshavarz does display a well-defined purpose and theme, reminding us of the absence of those qualities until that point.

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