Back in 2011, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi turned heads and won awards with his tense drama A Separation, which not only featured great performances and subtle writing, but was particularly interesting to Western viewers because of the way it mined Iranian culture for dramatic moments that just wouldn’t be all that dramatic if they happened over here. Watching it felt fresh. Well, it turns out he also made another film that was first screened in 2009, About Elly, which has slowly been playing the festival circuit ever since, and which is now finally getting a regular release in the US.
How does this earlier work stand up to A Separation, which amazed everyone with how affecting it was able to make the dissolution of a marriage by exploring its conflict from each opposing point of view, while obscuring the truth of the inciting incident being squabbled over from the audience? It’s not quite as good, doesn’t feel quite as assured in its filmmaking, but it’s still really great, and it has a lot in common with the later film (e.g. awkward interactions aplenty).
The story sees a group of young parents and their children traveling to the sea alongside one of their kids’ kindergarten teacher (Taraneh Alidoosti) and a single male friend (Shahab Hosseini), with the duel purposes of having a relaxing weekend and hooking the teacher up with the friend. The chill vibe collapses when the teacher, Elly, disappears though, and nobody is quite sure if some curious behavior led to her suddenly bolting without telling anyone, or if she drown in the sea while trying to save a young boy. Thanks to some judicious editing, we don’t know her fate either, so we’re left just as confused as the characters as they panic, try to process the situation, and eventually fall apart as their conflicts bring various lies and indiscretions to the surface. About Elly is human drama in capital letters, and well done human drama to boot. It’s exactly the sort of thing we need more of in theaters. Go see it, if for no other reason than to see the performance given by Golshifteh Farahani, who plays the story’s matchmaker, who clearly took herself to hellish emotional places to properly play the role, and who deserves the recognition.
