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‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ Review: Intimate Adaption of Azar Nafisi’s Memoir Is Inherently Feminine and Political
Eran Riklis’s decades-spanning film feels sporadic to a fault at times, but is elevated by the rebellious spirit of its central character.
Unfolding in episodic segments and significant jumps in time that sometimes feel too abrupt, the screenplay by Marjorie David follows Nafisi (an expressive Golshifteh Farahani) across a 24-year period, after the young academic holding a fresh American degree settles in Tehran with her husband Bijan (Arash Marandi) in 1979, on the heels of the country’s Islamic Revolution. But in the safety of Nafisi’s home, and accompanied by gorgeous spreads of fruits and pastries (all captured through Hélène Louvart’s poetic lens), the women tap into their deepest thoughts through literature, discuss their hardships, sing and dance, and debate liberating ideas, even sex. Not unlike “Shayda,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and other recent films about the varied experiences of Iranian women around the world, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” is an inherently political movie when considered in the real-life context of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022.
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