About Elly

(Darbareye Elly, Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2009, 118 min., DCP, Persian w/subtitles)

Rochester Premiere. From the acclaimed director of A Separation (Oscar, Best Foreign Language Film) and The Past comes this mystery-thriller, set among a group of Iranian friends visiting the Caspian Sea for a holiday weekend. As with Farhadi’s better known films, About Elly concerns the affluent, well educated, cultured, and only marginally religious members of Iran’s upper-middle-class. “Yet as in A Separation, it’s not hard to detect a subtext: a critique of the lies and evasions that permeate Iranian society.” (Philip Kemp, Sight & Sound) Elly, invited as a possible romantic interest for one of the newly single men, disappears from the group without a trace. The festive atmosphere quickly turns frantic as friends accuse one another. Plot-wise, Farhadi’s drama has been compared to Antonioni’s L’Avventura; but the film is less concerned with Elly’s disappearance than with exploring the intricate mechanisms of deceit, brutality, and betrayal which come into play when ordinary circumstances take a tragic turn.

“Cinema audiences have grown more mature and directors can no longer be content with force feeding them a set of preconceived ideas. Rather than asserting a world vision, a film must open a space in which the public can involve themselves in a personal reflection, and evolve from consumers to independent thinkers. Cinema has no other choice but to take up this approach, as I did when I made About Elly.” – Asghar Farhadi