About Elly (2009)
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About Elly Movie Review
About Elly is a 2009 Iranian mystery drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Golshifteh Farahani and Shahab Hosseini. It’s another Farhadi classic.
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“A bitter ending is better
than an endless bitterness“
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A young teacher disappears while on a vacation with three middle-class families to the coast of northern Iran. This is one excellent mystery above all else as we only learn about what happened to Elly in the third act. The movie is suitably puzzling and fascinating to follow as it unravels itself and everything starts clicking into place.
As a drama, About Elly succeeds widely as it deals well with the themes that the director is famous for – class relations, especially focusing on the middle class, social structures such as marriage and engagement as well as the resistance to the norms of Iranian culture and expectations. The film painfully showcases the plight of women in this country and just how helpless they are when it comes to marriage. And simply in the interactions between men and women here you can clearly see the horrendous difference in respect, thus making the movie more Iranian and less globally appealing as other Farhadi works for better and for worse.
I found the characters superbly developed, and especially the acting performances are uniformly fantastic. Shahab Hosseini is very good per usual and it’s always nice seeing him collaborating with Farhadi. He plays the most likable man of the bunch. Other men such as Peyman and Amir are much less likable and very realistic.
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As for the women, Elly is suitably mysterious and shy with Taraneh Alidoosti being immensely memorable in this intriguing role. But it is Golshifteh Farahani who stole the show from everyone else here. Her performance is the best one and the deepest one as is her character as Sepideh is easy to care for in her troubles while also painting it clearly just how frustrated everyone would be with her behavior. I also liked the role of the kids as they are so cute.
About Elly has a very long build-up, running at around forty minutes. Although definitely prolonged, I still really liked it for how well it developed its characters. It was essential to make us acquainted with every one of these people, so that later on we would care for them and be involved with all of the drama that followed.
As for the ending, I did like it, but I wanted an even more memorable, a bit more ambiguous conclusion. The middle act remains the greatest in this movie as the conflicts that arose are perfectly executed and each grounded in reality. The interactions that each and every one of them share are interesting to follow and the movie is incredibly engaging in those scenes.
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The dialogue in About Elly is absolutely fantastic per usual for the director. He knows how to write dialogue and scripts as he is also the screenwriter for this movie. The dialogue and characterization are easily its finest aspects, but I also have to commend Farhadi’s direction that is as always magnificent and polished. The cinematography is also excellent as the movie makes use of its seaside setting superbly, especially by connecting the characters’ inner turmoil with the harsh tides rocking the shore. It’s a great example of a one-setting movie that really works.
Thanks to excellent direction, fantastic characterization and a great script, About Elly is another Asghar Farhadi classic that benefits from a very well utilized seaside setting into the tumultuous narrative. The movie’s at its best in the second act with the gripping drama that ensued and many enthralling arguments. The performances are also excellent with Golshifteh Farahani being the standout in such a terrific role.
