Comedy-Drama ‘The Persian Version’ Tells A Moving Mother-Daughter Story

When the film begins, it takes snappy and broadly essayistic form, condensing story points about first-gen-versus-immigrant-gen culture clashes that have become familiar to modern viewers: the pressures of bi-culturalism, and the rejection felt from both sides. For Leila, these warring backdrops were quite literal, given the many years the United States and Iran have spent on the cusp of full-blown conflict, a mutual animus she experiences firsthand from classmates in both countries. Through flashbacks interspersed with helpful stock footage and familiar pop culture hallmarks, Leila sets this stage quickly and effectively, but Keshavarz doesn’t linger on it too long. The Persian Version quickly narrows its focus to the story of the Jamshidpour family, made up of Leila, her eight older brothers—not dissimilar from Keshavarz’s seven—her mother, her maternal grandmother or “mamanjoon” (Bella Warda), and her father Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand), an ailing doctor in need of a new heart.

The ages and timelines aren’t always clear—the film is set in “the 2000s,” though this extends as far as modern day, without the clarity of how much time has passed between events. And while this dulls the effect of certain interpersonal dynamics (especially fights and falling outs), it does end up benefiting the screenplay’s zippy, zig-zag structure, which hops back and forth between decades, often at random, as though what we were watching were stream-of-consciousness recollections. After Leila’s divorce from her wife (before the film begins), she starts seeing a white English Broadway actor, with the whitest and most English sounding name, Maximilian Balthazar (Tom Byrne), leading to the uproarious image of a self-identified lesbian sleeping with the drag queen main character of Hedwig and the Angry Inch—a sweet but sharply funny scene that gives us a complete sense of who Leila is, from her complicated desires, to her straightforward and often curt demeanor.

The Jamshidpour family in a flashback of "The Persian Version."

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

As Leila, Mohammadi is a firecracker, bringing a fierceness which she molds into comedy and drama in equal measure. She’s supported by one hell of a lively ensemble of siblings who, though they’re all sketched and designed according to existing “types” in American media—a jock, a nerd, a stoner, an overachiever, and so on—meld together as a fun and boisterous protective unit as they tower over her. By mapping the brothers onto these familiar archetypes, Keshavarz further highlights just how much of an outsider Leila is, as a girl for whom there’s no existing cultural roadmap along which to assimilate.

This is made all the more difficult by the domineering Shireen, who starts out as a two-dimensional cutout of a disapproving immigrant mother until Leila decides to let the audience in on parts of her story in the ’80s and ’90s that speak to her resilient and ambitious nature, including taking up mountains of extra work as a realtor to pay for her husband’s hospital bills. While Leila maintains reservations (and perhaps even full-blown denial) about her mother’s complete humanity, Keshavarz and cinematographer André Jäger capture Shireen with a sense of heroic reverence seldom offered to older Middle Eastern women on American screens (a baton Noor grabs and runs with, creating a glowing, multifaceted portrait of a woman concealing the worst parts of her history behind a brusque facade). Even though Leila may not see it while she’s narrating this story, the future “Leila”—which is to say, Keshavarz herself—frames her mother as ambitious and sexy and cool.

Niousha Noor as Shireen Jamshidpour in "The Persian Version."

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The more Leila rejects their similarities, like their short tempers and their penchant for pushing people away, the more she’s forced to confront the ways in which their stories overlap. Though Leila and Shireen have lived wildly different childhoods (in the United States and Iran), The Persian Version spends about an equal amount of time with their younger selves in flashbacks. They’re played as children by Chiara Stella and Kamand Shafieisabet respectively, a pair of young actresses who bring a knowing wit to each line, and a deep intelligence and understanding to each silent reaction as they take in their surrounding environments, building a sense of self according to (and in defiance of) the way they’re treated by those around them.

Buoyed by pop music and pop sensibilities (including vivid hand-drawn illustrations that aren’t used nearly as often as they should be), The Persian Version is a uniquely conceived story, crafted from the inside out and sketched with the intimacy of Keshavarz’s personal experience. While it spends its first act simply going through familiar motions, it eventually blossoms with charm, hilarity and unexpected sentiment, as Leila confronts aspects of her family’s past that help her better understand her mother, and in the process, herself.

"The Persian Version" director Maryam Keshavarz.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics