About Elly (from director of A Separation)

johnny_ultimate

A 2009 film from Asghar Farhadi - director of last year's best film by a country mile - is getting a belated release in the IFI in September.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-CAKV2CUU0

With his previous films unavailable or out of print on DVD at the moment, should be a good opportunity to see something else from this fantastic talent.

Sad Professor

Delighted to hear this will be showing in the IFI. I heard Axiom was releasing it in the UK and was hoping it would make its way here as well. Apparently it's somewhat inspired by L'Avventura. Can't wait to see it.

I assume a DVD release will be forthcoming as well. Afaik none of his previous films (including this) have been released on DVD in the UK. Fireworks Wednesday is supposed to be really good as well.

EDIT: according to their website it's showing in the IFI from the 14th to the 27th of September. Nice 2 week release. I saw A Separation at the last screening on the last day and it was packed.

http://www.axiomfilms.co.uk/films/coming-soon/about-elly.html

Fishooks12

Looks great

Off topic but I just got around to watching A Separation and loved it. The female lead, wasted underneath that Burka!

e_e

Nice, they were talking about the same director's Fireworks Wednesday on the Filmspotting podcast and it sounds very good too.

johnny_ultimate

Oh the rush of seeing a truly great film

This is frankly magnificent, as expected. I don't know exactly how Farhadi does it, but this is an emotionally powerful, hypnotic piece of work. I can't think of many other filmmakers working at the moment who can craft a story with such care and elegance. He's also an absolutely fantastic director of actors - the whole ensemble cast ooze genuineness that makes everything that happens to them feel real and significant.

The basic setup is similar to L'Avventura, yes: a mysteriously disappearing woman and the reactions of her middle class companions. But this is a very different film - more straightforward, but that's by no means a bad things. The revelations and deceptions are enthralling throughout, and like A Separation the whole thing moves at an extremely considered pace. Another thing I love about this and its successor are how the social commentary driving the film is so subtle and deeply engrained in the plot. Farhadi never explicitly tells us what to think, but there's insight about the way Iranian society works (here particularly gender roles) that nicely enhances the core plot.

I gush: but there's few if any concerns I had with this film. It's a tight, intense and engrossing film that's brilliantly acted, written, shot and directed (a delightfully unobtrusive visual style, and only a single, devastating music cue). If you liked a Separation, there's little reason for you not to be equally wooed by this. A truly glorious trip to the cinema.

johnny_ultimate

Some extended thoughts on this. In case its unclear, I loved pretty much ever frame of it.

A question: how will Asghar Farhadi follow up a genuine, almost undisputed masterpiece such as A Separation? Alas, we'll have to wait until at least next year to find out the answer. In the meantime, distributors have a small but significant Farhadi back catalogue to plunder and present to the many audience members wooed by last year's best film (I have absolutely no qualms making such a statement). About Elly is Farhadi's 2009 predecessor to A Separation, and its quite astonishing that it took that film's success to earn this equally majestic work a wide cinematic release.

Veterans of Antonioni's L'avventura will recognise some very basic similarities with that film's plot: they both feature a vanishing and an upper-middle class ensemble. Although that's pretty much where comparisons end: whereas Antonioni's approach was more experimental and existential, About Elly is more straightforward (there's even full-on dramatic resolution, a concept the Italian director rejected). Although that's no bad thing...

Here, a group of middle-class Iranian friends leave Tehran for a weekend away. In their company is Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), invited along by enthusiastic matchmaker Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), who hopes Elly will prove a suitable potential fiancee for Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini, who featured in A Separation - that film's male lead Peyman Moadi is also present here). The rest of the group know nothing of Elly, but they warm to her quickly. A misunderstanding results in the friends missing out on their usual villa and settling on a rundown beachside house instead. After twenty four hours of cleaning and general merriment, Elly is anxious to get home, constantly reminding Sepideh that she only agreed to stay for a day. Sepideh ignores her pleas and forcibly encourages an increasingly distraught Elly to stick around. When asked to keep an eye on the kids as they play on the beach, Elly mysteriously disappears, leading to a series of startling revelations and convoluted deceptions.

Here's a rare challenge, and one that may well become pronounced as we get to see more Farhadi films: I'm struggling to think of sufficiently positive adjectives and adverbs to critique this gem of a production. Like A Separation, this is a film devoid of negative attributes, or at the very least none significant enough to be worthy of comment. This is as close as contemporary cinema gets to true flawlessness. From the jovial opening sequences to the devastating conclusion, About Elly is truly great cinema with nary a misjudged frame.

What's most amazing is how effortless Farhadi makes it all look. Now, obviously a film this tightly crafted has had immeasurable effort and enthusiasm poured into it. But with its proudly unshowy delivery and razor-sharp pacing, it all flows so deceptively simply. Farhadi is a wonderful cinematic storyteller - from the micro details to the deeply engrained social commentary (this time, Iran's gender dynamics and social hypocrisies are up for scrutiny), the writer/director is perhaps almost unequalled in his ability to hook an audience into his fascinating narratives. Nothing detracts from the story. This is a particularly taut and claustrophobic tale, taking place around a tiny handful of locations, and mostly confined to the beach house and its neighbouring shoreline.

Visually, About Elly is again misleading in its simplicity. The camera moves and flows elegantly with the story: the camera motion becoming more intense and unstable in parallel with the film's most dramatic and emotional junctures. It's a film with an absence of excess or unnecessary distraction. This extends to even the sound design: there's only a single (devastating) music cue at the very end (like that astonishing conclusion to A Separation, the final moments are truly heartbreaking). The result is purely cinematic storytelling that never condescends to its audience.

I could gush about Farhadi and his technical crew indefinitely, but that would mean I ignore the other people who make this film truly great: the cast. What a fantastic ensemble it is. Every character here feels like a (to borrow a phrase from the Drive soundtrack) real human being, and they interact in entirely convincing ways. The cast is almost universally excellent, but Golshifteh Farahani is particularly hypnotic as the closest thing the film has to a traditional protagonist (although this is very much a group piece, and Elly herself is a major driving force despite limited screen presence). Also worthy of individual note is Saber Abar, who shows up late but makes a very strong impression as an acquaintance of Ellys who defies both the audiences' and characters' expectations of such a character. The honest, naturalistic performances add huge depth to the film as a whole. Without such talented actors, the film's drama and emotional sucker punches would lack force. Instead, we are fascinated by their motivations, distressed by their bad decisions and deeply affected by their dilemmas.

I'll stop before all this enthusiasm and unchecked praise becomes tiring. In summary: About Elly is just wonderful. Pretty much everything about it. It cements Farghadi's standing as one of the most important living directors. It may be a little late arriving in cinemas, but this is by no means a negative indicator of its quality: this is every single bit the film A Separation is. Indeed, perhaps it allows us to answer the question posed in the opening paragraph after all, albeit with some slight alterations. How did Asghar Farhadi follow up a masterpiece like About Elly? With another masterpiece.

Sad Professor

I've been sick for the last week so only got around to seeing this today. A superb piece of work, just as good as A Separation in my view. Doesn't really have that much in common with L'avventura as some reviews suggested. There are some parallels in the plot, especially in the first half, but that's as far as it goes. It's actually quite Hitchcockian in many respects. But like A Separation, it's a compelling ensemble drama that has a very specific cultural and social context while still telling a very universal human story.

Re the ending:

There's so much deception in the film. Was Elly's fiancé really her fiancé at all? If so, why does he pretend to be her brother? I see no reason for him to do this, unless he already suspected her of cheating. It seems possible that he was actually not the abusive fiancé described earlier in the film but someone she was having an affair with. Although I'm not sure it makes much difference: either way Elly felt trapped and saw suicide as the only option.

I overheard some people wondering if that was really her in the morgue. It seems very unlikely that another woman would wash up in the same place at the same time, so I'm inclined to think that it was her. Her face was probably left partially obscured for censorship reasons or just to leave things a bit ambiguous - she is a mysterious character after all.

Why does she commit suicide? I guess the hint comes earlier in the film. "Bitter ending rather than a endless biterness", etc. Once again, Farhadi seems to be skirting the edge of being outright critical of Iranian society.

Anyway, looks like I've another film to add to my ever growing "Best of 2012" list.

johnny_ultimate

Sad Professor wrote: »

Re the ending

While initially I was wondering whether it could be another body, I don't think Farhadi necessarily intends there to be any major ambiguity: the look on the characters' faces says all that needs to be said IMO. Unlike L'avventura - where the resolution doesn't really matter, and the vanishing woman is merely a MacGuffin of sorts to shift the focus onto the real protagonists - Farhadi is a much more naturalistic, traditional storyteller, and his films need a pretty definitive punctuation mark. The discovery of Elly's body lands that last devastating blow for both the audience and the characters. Their stories and decisions are vitally important, but so are Elly's. The film would possibly be a little worse if the mystery was left dangling, and I think the closure provided is the perfect way to finish this story.

I also think Farhadi is quite explicit in his condemnation of the mistreatment of women in Iranian society here. Sepideh may come across as confident and proactive, but the reality is she's distressingly powerless. Elly, stuck in a hopeless situation, even more so.

Anyway, looks like I've another film to add to my ever growing "Best of 2012" list.

If you haven't seen Holy Motors yet, you can preemptively throw that down there too Been an absolutely fantastic few weeks for new releases.