The Persian Version

There’s a heartfelt story by Iranian-American Maryam Keshavarz in The Persian Version buried deep within its Gen-Z fourth-wall-breaking narration. Yet, there’s a lot to wade through to get to its heartfelt acknowledgement of mothering and sacrifice.

In Keshavarz’s semi-autobiographical film, The Persian Version, Leila (Layla Mohammadi) is a lesbian filmmaker in her 20s, the youngest and only girl of nine siblings. Struggling to understand her place in the family and ostracised by her mother for her queer identity, Leila falls pregnant from an actor and performing drag-queen Maximillian Balthazar (Tom Byrne). Through her pregnancy, Keshavarz explores the role of a mother and how Leila’s mother carries burdens and traumas that may explain how she sees the world.

Replicating the time-freezing self-awareness of The Polite Society (2023), the coattails of the Indian-British diasporic fiction are firmly in mind during The Persian Version, and as a result, a feeling of Deja vu with audiences is likely, especially when the bombardment of title graphics becomes overwhelming, distracting from its themes initially juggled heavy-handedly.

Flashing backwards and forwards through time, The Persian Version whiplashes between Laila through the 80s, 90s and 00s, played in her younger years by a charming Chiara Stella, with each time period definable by the back-in-trend outfits and the changes in communication from flip-phones and landlines with remarkable precision. The way each sequence becomes a respectful nod to the past capturing its décor and attitudes works in selling Laila’s discomfort as a modern woman.

There are also noticeable issues with sound recording, with one scene involving Leila and her ex having its rerecorded dialogue (ADR) at a jarringly apparent quality difference from the rest of the scene. Whilst not the worst issue of the film, it reflects the tonal shifts the film struggles to get right. It also raised questions during a dance sequence to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun about the practicalities of its filming, where, upon returning to Iran, a younger Leila introduces her friends to the American culture of the 80s.

The camera during the flamboyant dancing is unfortunately statically locked to a plane, as though filming a set, restricted to its angles so as not to break the deception. Whilst this typically isn’t an issue, the film, in its latter third, spends time in a location convincingly sold as 1960s Iran. The juxtaposition of sequences makes the dance feel contrived, breaking the illusion further and removing audiences from the film.

In its credit, when the film explores Laila’s mother, Shireen (Niousha Noor), including a prolonged flashback of her own, played by Kamand Shafieisabet, The Persian Version creates an impact that it’d failed to do till that point. Learning that at age 13, Shireen married 22-year-old Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand), falling pregnant shortly after. The longer we spend with Shirin in the 1960s, the stronger the film became, as themes of coercion, control and the cultural expectations of Iranian women at that time paint a strong image of Shireen’s situation, resorting to her emigration to the United States.

With a scattergun approach in making comments about dual nationality diaspora, gender and sexual identity, and the culture war between America and Iran, ultimately, a lot is being thrown at the wall, but thankfully for Keshavarz and for audience’s sanity, the dissection of generational traumas and its unspoken burdens sticks to the messy and chaotic spread.

The Persian Version is in UK cinemas from 22 March.