elicopperman

As far back as my senior year in high school, I remember reading Marjane Satrapi's original graphic novel and being tightly engrossed into its earnest depiction of the rebellious Iranian experience. Upon seeing the film adaptation not long afterwards, I admired Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud attempting to abridge the source material into a 90 minute feature. While it does admittedly try to cram a few too many story beats into its runtime, Persepolis nonetheless captures a fascinating autobiographical look at Satrapi's life from the midst of the Iranian Revolution to her transition into adulthood.

As far as coming of age tales go, seeing Marjane fluctuate throughout her life is as emotionally captivating as it is harrowingly bleak. Seeing all of the different people come and go from Satrapi's liberated uncle Anouche to her various exes and her endearing grandmother, seeing a rebellious woman struggle through her country's historical oppression shows a unique point of view that many foreign audiences would not have been fully aware of. Led in large part by Chiara Mastroianni's soothing first person narration, there is as much grounded humor as there is emotional turmoil throughout the growing pains shown in Satrapi's development. The muted graphic animation direction allows us the settings to stand out within the dramatic tension, painting towns like Tehran and Vienna as distinctively as possible from their late 20th century timeframe. Very rarely are animated features able to tackle subject matter this sincerely through stylized reality, let alone one from an individual rebel's work.

If the film adaptation of Persepolis doesn't tackle everything that the original graphic novel featured, it's still quite effective and bold in its idiosyncratic endearment from an exuberant Iranian-French artist. When those who have gone through systemic oppression within their own countries share their personal experiences, works like this come up as reminders to empathize with those who have seen more in their eyes than the ignorant public would assume. 18 years later and there's still much to dissect from this autobiographical dramedy within an Iranian backdrop.

While not one of John Waters' grossest or crudest early works, Female Trouble is still a delightfully trashy dark comedy about the insane life of transgressive criminal Dawn Davenport. Despite the suggestive content, this flick is a shockingly brutal character study on a young woman attempting to rebel against American society. Divine might sell the bawdy campy persona of Dawn Davenport upon first glance, but seeing the woman's downward spiral from high school dropout to death row criminal is still harrowing to witness. From all of the insanity Dawn encounters, like having her own child out of force or said daughter Taffy trying to take her down, it's quite captivating to see how one promiscuous delinquent can completely flip their life upside down based on the circumstances that befall them.

On top of being quite cohesive story wise, this arguably might be the first of Waters' filmography to be shot like a traditional movie. Where his previous feature-length endeavors like Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos went for a more faux-documentary styled presentation to make their grotesque content that much more impactful, seeing a film like this go for a more studio-style filmmaking approach allows the film's overall story to play out more substantially. While the filmmakers still had to utilize on set location shoots (Dawn's apartment was built inside a condemned suite above someone's store), they were still able to present each outrageous scenario in a cohesive vacuum to get the themes of blind sided vanity and finding beauty within one's own crimes across. One could even argue that this would mark a strong transition into Waters getting comfortable with studio filmmaking, thus making his minimal resource background pay off in the long run.

Lastly, without spoiling anything, this actually might be the best of Waters' filmography to watch around the Christmas season. Trust me when I say that you'll have a much merrier time watching the film during said time than you'd think.