An average movie

Since I really loved ‘Persepolis’, I was really eager to see this following directorial effort from Marjane Satrapi. Well, even though it turned out to be not bad at all, I’m afraid it still didn’t really work though. First of all, even though this movie was also an adaptation from another acclaimed graphic novel written and drawn by Satrapi, in contrary to ‘Persepolis’, she decided to make a live-action adaptation but, considering the material, it might have worked better in the animation genre. To put it bluntly, the story was quite a mess. In fact, somehow, I haven’t read the book, but I believe it could still work with a graphic novel but, when adapted this way, the visual realism just clashed with the inertia of the story. At least, I have to admit that the whole thing looked fine though. What to say about this tale? I guess it was supposed to be some kind of Persian fairytale and I did like the fact that the narrator was omnipotent and would tell anything from the past and the future completely randomly. Unfortunately, it was just rather difficult to get the whole thing started and, to be honest, it never really took off. Finally, Mathieu Amalric remains one of my favorite French actors and delivered here another solid performance but, eventually, his character was just so uncharismatic and rather unlikeable and, as a result, it was difficult to care about what he was going through. The other characters were not much more interesting (except for Azrael) but, at least, they had the excuse that they were all barely developed. Anyway, to conclude, I really wonder if it would have worked better as an animated feature but, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Marjane Satrapi’s work.

6/10