Monday, October 4, 2021

About Elly (2009)

IMDb plot summary: The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.
Directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Golshifteh Farahani, Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, and Merila Zare'i.

Watching these characters work through their various reactions to this unexpected tragedy is really fascinating, and the actors do an incredible job of exuding the closeness and intimacy of true familial relations. I absolutely feel like I’m just observing them on a family getaway. That being said, the only other film I’d seen from this director was A Separation, which I admired but found difficult in its abrupt ending. I had a similar reaction to this here. I was more on board with the characters from moment one, but the ending made so little impact I had to look up the Wikipedia summary to remember how it actually ended so I could write this review. It’s absolutely worth a watch but I did hope for just a little bit more.

How it entered my Flickchart:
About Elly > Sunday in the Park with George
About Elly < Woman in the Dunes
About Elly < Being John Malkovich
About Elly > Natural Born Killers
About Elly > Myn Bala: Warriors of the Steppe
About Elly > Chaos Theory
About Elly > Cool Hand Luke
About Elly > The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
About Elly > Lifeforce
About Elly > Talk Radio
About Elly < Fantasia 2000
Final spot: #1296 out of 3447, or 62%.

No comments: