One of the best books of the last decade (two of the best books, I should say–there was Persepolis and there was Persepolis II) have been made into a film.
The artist and author, Marjane Satrapi, is the director along with Vincent Paronnaud, so I can only believe that the crisp emotion and dry drama of the those deeply moving graphic novels of great comic intelligence will be right up there on the screen. And Catherine Deneuve plays her mother, And Danielle Darrieux plays the grandmother. I interviewed both of them twenty-five years ago for a piece I did for Vogue about the French actress after forty, and the fact that there wereFrench actresses after forty in France. I spoke to Derrieux in her dressing room after a play she was starring in. I can’t remember where I met Deneuve. Hmm. Maybe I’m making the Deneuve part up. My favorite was Jean Moreau. I went to her apartment for breakfast. She had barrettes in her hair, no makeup, and gave me croissants and jam and coffee. Pretty much the highlight of my short celebrity profiling life. Except maybe Roger Tory Peterson. And of course Tim McCarver. Vogue was very eclectic in those days.
Back to Persepolis: If you haven’t read these graphic novels, I insist that you do. You will not be sorry. And I insist that I see the movie. It opened today. I will go tomorrow. Sometimes the personal is not only not the political, it is the best way to see how alien the political is. My grammar aside, go see it.
Here is something Satrapy said in a CNN interview:
The use of the humor is something that was very amazing to me. Because to me, humor is the height of understanding. Anywhere in the world we cry for the same reason. We cry because our father is dead, or our mother is sick. We don’t laugh for the same reason. If we laugh together, it’s as if we’ve touched each other’s spirit. We showed this movie in Japan, and people laugh at the same time as the French do, as the Americans do, as the Swiss, as in Germany. … It gives me some hope actually. click here for more
This passage struck me because I had just been thinking about the scene in Sullivan’s Travels when the hobos were all laughing and watching cartoons. I think this woman does have a touch of Preston Sturgis to her! That’s my highest compliment.
Here is a page from the book:
Write a comment