Persepolis

Persepolis is at once a confessional autobiography, historical re-enactment, graphic art object, and deeply involving contemporary story about a girl’s coming-of-age while navigating not only the usual pitfalls of adolescence but also the enforced repression brought on by Iran’s Islamic revolution of the Eighties. Satrapi’s story, which she and Paronnaud adapted into an animated film from her graphic novels, is both specific and universal, and therein lies a large measure of its appeal. “I had survived a war, but a banal love story nearly killed me,” she comments sardonically at one point. The film’s flat, mostly black-and-white animation helps convey some of the sense of a graphic novel, but moreover, the visual look complements the story’s moral sphere, a realm governed by absolute rights and wrongs and lots of gray in-between areas. As befits a coming-of-age story, there are a couple of indulgent passages, but they hardly get in the way of the overall flow.