Let me tell you a little something about Chicken with Plums, the new film from Marjane Satrapi, author of the comic book Persepolis: It looks beautiful. Like, heart-wrenchingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful, a kind of absurdist fairy tale manifesting in a mix of live action and animation. That "live action and animation" things seems overdone now - Tim Burton made a buttload doing it in Alice in Wonderland, and even the final Harry Potter film demonstrated the hybridity in its little vignette about the horcruxes - but Chicken with Plums seems like something else entirely, something more akin to the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez than Burton's hokey spin on Lewis Carroll.
Iranian Satrapi, who lives in Paris, transformed her first animated novel, Persepolis, into a film in 2007 with co-director Vincent Paronnaud; the flick, about Satrapi growing up in Iran around the time of the Iranian revolution and struggling with its impact on her life and family, caught the eye of Hollywood heavyweight Sean Penn and did well commercially and critically. The brisk, straightforward animating style was simple but emotive, whereas Chicken with Plums seems more opulent and lush in its imagining. (And, bonus: it stars Golshifteh Farahani, a gorgeous, affecting Iranian actress who played Leonardo DiCaprio's love interest in 2008's Body of Lies and was also in 2011's little-seen There Be Dragons. Let her be in more things, please!)
So Chicken with Plums, Satrapi's third book, is basically the end-of-life story of Nasser Ali Khan, a respected violinist who decides to welcome death after his beloved instrument is taken from him. Caught between two women, the memories of the life he could have had, and the finality of death, Nasser spends his last few days on earth in a haze of nostalgia and regret. Of course I've read it, and of course I sobbed the whole time. That's just how I do.
Anyway, the film version of Chicken with Plums certainly looks gorgeous, and will be released in D.C. theaters in mid-August. Watch the trailer below!
