Anyone who is a fan of Oscar winning A Separation, and the work of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will want to see About Elly. It is a masterclass in both storytelling and film making. Farhadi is a multi-award winning director and not without reason; one of those reasons is his brilliance in the art of deception and illusion. He has the gift of deceiving us into believing we are watching a simple slice of Iranian life but all the while he is planting seeds that will grow and eventually come to maturity and fruition in the most unexpected and enlightened of ways.

About Elly, superficially at least, is a story about a group of 30 something middle class Iranians, who together with their children take a 3 day break from life in Tehran to travel north up to the Caspian Sea for some sun, fun and relaxation. Unbeknown to the main group trip organizer, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) has been playing matchmaker. She plans on introducing her daughters apparently singleton teacher Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti) a stranger to the main group, to the recently divorced Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini).

What is striking from the opening scenes is the tremendous unity and strength within the group which cannot be shaken even when they are informed the accommodation is double booked. Trip organizer Sepideh resolves the issue by gaining the sympathy of to the site owners with a little white lie, explaining that Elly and Ahmad are newlyweds and the group are then offered alternative arrangements.

Spirits are high and the friends democratically vote to accept the offer of the apartment and then decide amongst themselves who will be responsible for cleaning as the new apartment is unkempt and in desperate need of a clean. This setback is only a minor inconvenience and serves to increase the togetherness and harmony of the group. The togetherness of the group is further strengthened with the sharing of the main meal and participation of all in an after dinner game of Charades.

The apparent harmony is short lived when the very next morning an unforeseen incident sets about a dynamic that will tear the tranquility and cohesion of the group apart. What has on the surface appeared to be a straightforward even simple tale of a group of friends on a short holiday quickly evolves into a tale of mystery, tragedy, conspiracy, hope and despair now set against a backdrop of the higher and more culturally important issues of morality and honor.

For anyone not too familiar with Iran and its culture, outside of TV newsreels, like myself, About Elly will challenge any assumptions you may have about life in a modern theocratic Iran. Yes, there is a deep regard for spiritual life and the clear divide between men and women remains. There are a couple of powerful examples within the film which highlight this same point. The first is when Sepideh risks her own life by diving into the sea in full dress including hijab. It is noticeable the young boy removes his tee shirt to go bared top without a second glance. The second is when the group are debating and judging the good name of Elly within the context of morality and honor. There clearly is more than a hint of a suggestion that it is perhaps better for a woman to be dead than suffer dishonor.

At the same time, Farhadi gives us more than enough glimpses that the times are a changing for at least some middle class women. The very democratic nature of the group. Women challenging their husband’s decisions, making decisions not solely on the basis of child rearing and domesticity. Within this liberal group there is no call to prayer 5 times daily making religion less suffocating and embracing.

With numerous awards and nominations behind it, About Elly deserves to be given consideration and attention by all serious fans of World Cinema. For nearly 2 hours Farhadi has us mesmerized, captivated, our eyes glued to the screen while he works his unmistakable brand of magic. About Elly is truly a cinematic experience to savior.

This review was originally published on 9/18/12. Cinema Guild released About Elly to US audiences on April 8th.

Like an intoxicating, slow-moving swirl of deep colors and even deeper emotions, Afghani filmmaker and novelist Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone, an adaptation of his own award-winning novel, Syngue Sabour, quietly enraptures the senses and rewards those who possess the titular human quality. Set in war-torn Afghanistan, it’s a meditation about truth as the key to true liberation. Truth as breath, words, emerging gently, rebelliously, from within a woman whose every fiber pleads with her to suppress it.

The film opens with the woman (the gorgeous Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who remains unnamed) caring for her ostensibly comatose husband (Hamidreza Javdan, also nameless), in a small, sparsely furnished, but lusciously colored room. She dabs his forehead with a compress and whimpers, “Can you hear me?” The rift between them (a fine juxtaposition to the film’s pervasive intimacy) caused by the husband’s apparent absence of consciousness (from a bullet to the neck) frames the story.

She pleads with her husband to wake up, and we learn that their family (they have two children) has been rendered destitute—she’s shouldering more than she can handle, raising the children alone and keeping her husband alive (by a string) with saline bags, for pity’s sake. Abandoned by her in-laws (they’ve fled the war, like many others), unable to pay for her husband’s medicine due to piles of debt, and even hurting for a reliable source of water, she’s helpless beyond reason. She speaks to her husband meekly, in a steady, undulating stream of whispered secrets, confessions of fear, and desperate pleas to the heavens for respite. She looks as if in a daze as she vents, her eyes fixed on something that isn’t there. The husband lies motionless.

Distant bombs rattle the azure walls, a constant reminder of the death that looms beyond the windows and doors. The war eventually enters her family’s home in the form of two soldiers. She forms a sexual relationship with one of them, a young man who occasionally returns for intimate rendezvous (she’s lied and told him she’s a whore to protect her husband, who’s been hidden in the closet.) During a visit to her aunt’s place, the aunt poetically likens her dire situation to that of a folk tale, Syngue Sabour, which tells of a stone that you empty all of your fears and secrets into until it eventually shatters, leaving you free to proceed through life. The scene is heavy-handed and a bit melodramatic, but it ultimately serves the story well.

The woman’s one-way talks with her husband turn increasingly disagreeable with the expectations thrust upon her as a Muslim woman—she speaks in her husband’s ear of long-gestating resentments and even of her adulterous encounters with the soldier. Her eyes soften, her voice calms down from a nervous soprano to a buttery alto, and she pulses with confidence and forbidden ecstasy. She seems to have let go of her burdens, and even looks happy. We think, if the husband can hear her, he must be torn apart inside, even seething. Eventually, his eyes suddenly show a glimmer of presence—if he is the legendary stone, then he must shatter.

If you listen, watch, and submit to the film’s admittedly glacial pace, you’ll be rewarded with a wonderful, soul-stirring filmic experience. Rahimi and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriére make empowering, lyrical and elegant statements about female oppression in Muslim cultures. Farahani is so pretty it’s breathtaking, which is good, since the film is essentially hers, a 100-minute monologue. Her mannerisms and demeanor evolve ever so slowly over the course of the film, though she looks like a completely different person by the film’s conclusion. Rahimi couldn’t have done better than to have cast her in this, a veritable mountain of a role.

Cinematographer Thierry Arbogast (The Professional, The Fifth Element) has outdone himself—you could print out every frame of The Patience Stone and hang them in art museums across the globe next to Goya paintings (one of Rahimi’s main visual inspirations.) The colors are rich, vibrant, and serene, with the couple’s room bathed in an unforgettable blue and adorned with richly dyed fabrics and tapestries. Rahimi’s camera is unearthly still, levitating in place and un-intrusively observing. He barely cuts, letting shots linger long enough for you to absorb every bit of the image. The Patience Stone is a pulsating, moody existential tale that delicately swarms the senses and simply asks that you sit, watch, listen, and inhale deeply.

The Patience Stone trailer: