Persepolis

Persepolis (Persian City) is a very entertaining film based on an autobiographical graphic novel written by the co-director of this film, Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian who grew up in the late 70s in Iran. The film traces about 20 years of Marjane's life from the beginning in Iran with the ruling Shahs, their downfall, the Iran-Iraq war, her stay in Vienna and then life back in Iran under the religious mullahs and then finally her departure to Paris.

Shot in slick, dark, powerful animation, the film starts of bright and brilliant with a young Marjane living with her parents under the rule of the Shahs. She is a fiesty young girl, curious and determined. She is a joy to watch and you root for her cause. Her narrative is smooth and appropriate as she leads you through the various different incidences that start to change her wonderful life into something quite different as the revolutionaries take over.

As the heroine grows up and out the film starts to lose some of its grip. With Marjane, the film seems to sink into some depression as well. The politics that rends Marjane's life also blunts the appeal of the film a bit and at times, in Marjane's dislocation, it looks pretty much like your routine immigration experience film. However, the film's politics is very clear in its belief that politics basically sucks.

Marjane is ultimately the classical modern immigrant: one who is as lost in their own culture as they are in the new one they try to flee in to.

The Valet (La Doublure)

We generally like French films a lot. They seem to be very intimate and warm. Francis Veber's films (The Closet, Dinner Game, even the American film - Three Fugitives) are specially enjoyable. They are generally over-the-top, comic versions of very selfish people desperately trying to get by.

The Valet, unlike most French films, had a decent opening in the US and was generally well received. It is an amazing little nugget. The film is full of unforgettable characters and is so light-hearted retelling of the age-old 'beauty and the loser' tale but with a genuine affection. Daniel Auteuil (who has lately been in every French film we've seen) is a billionaire two-timing his even richer wife with a supermodel (and what a supermodel) and somewhat a valet must save his marriage, his fortune and his affair.

The highlight of the film is of course this amazing French beauty Alice Taglioni. I've never seen someone who is such a supermodel. She is more supermodel than any real supermodel. She is certainly the heart and the very long legs on which the film stands, and well.

Chocolat

In this sweet movie, a woman opens a chocolaterie and the minds of small town folks.