Summary

“The Persian Version” tells the story of a mother and daughter, celebrating Iranian-American culture and exploring familial dysfunction through fresh eyes. The movie’s fearless narrator, Layla Mohammadi, brings a buoyant energy to the story, despite the fractured bonds between her and her Iranian immigrant parents. The strength of the film lies in its empowering portrayal of three generations of Iranian women, although some may find that the growth of the daughter’s character feels truncated compared to her mother’s.

Filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz dips a toe into her own history in The Persian Version, which is finally seeing a limited theatrical release after its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Audience Award for the US Dramatic Competition there, and for good reason. The movie weaves a mother and daughter’s parallel narratives together with ease, celebrating Iranian-American culture through fresh eyes and exploring familial dysfunction from a place of love.

Layla Mohammadi is The Persian Version’s fearless narrator — for most of the film, anyway — and her character Leila pushes the story along with a buoyant energy that belies the fractured bonds at the heart of the movie. She comes from a large and loving family and has been alternately doted on and teased relentlessly by her eight brothers, but she still feels like an outcast in the face of her Iranian immigrant parents. Her mother Shirin (a charming and captivating performance by Niousha Noor) at times acts as her biggest enemy, and the two women find it impossible to understand each other across the chasm of their lifestyle choices.

While the brothers do not get any individual journeys for the most part, seeing as it is a tight 2-hour movie rather than a television series, their scenes still feel lived-in. Each minor interaction is a realistic depiction of sibling support or rivalry, adding to the beautiful chaos that is Leila’s life. Another example of said chaos is the fact that, though Leila is a lesbian, we are introduced to her when she sleeps with Maximillian (Tom Byrne) at a costume party after assuming he is a drag queen. Turns out he is instead an actor starring in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but she ends up pregnant either way and thus further inflames her mother’s disappointment in her.

Mother and daughter are put to the test when the family patriarch Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand) is hospitalized for a heart transplant, forcing them to set aside their differences to keep the family functioning in his absence. Though Shirin tasks her daughter with looking after Mamanjoon (a delightful Bella Warda) to keep her out of the way, Leila spending time with her grandmother is what unlocks the mystery of her mother’s past and sends The Persian Version careening in a different but fascinating direction. It is at this point that the movie flips to focusing on Shirin’s life, explaining how much she’s already done to keep the family afloat whenever her husband faltered.

In fact, Leila’s arc more than anything is understanding and accepting how much she and Shirin have in common, being two women whose ambition will not be tampered by the disdain of those around them. Those who are not following closely may find it hard to keep track of timelines and perspective shifts, but cue cards and fourth wall breaks are there to keep the audience abreast of new discoveries whether they take place in the past or present. Behind Shirin’s impressive self-education as an adult and awe-inspiring rise in the world of New York City real estate lies a more tragic and shameful secret that she and Ali Reza left behind in Iran. As Leila peels back these various layers of her mother’s story, she begins to see her in a new light that in turn provides an olive branch for Shirin to reach out to her only daughter.

The strength of The Persian Version lies in the impressions and feelings that it leaves behind, and the empowering portrait it paints of three generations of Iranian women. Its weakness, on the other hand, is simply that Leila’s growth feels truncated in favor of her mother’s. Perhaps that is because her primary concern — Shirin’s distance from her — is the only one Keshavarz’s script feels fit to tackle, or perhaps it is because Leila as a character is not ready for too much self-reflection yet. Whatever the reason, the movie ends without a clear resolution for her, but that is necessarily to its detriment. Her family is well worth the time the film spends on them, and it’s impossible to leave the theater without a smile.

The Persian Version will be released in select theaters on October 20. It has a runtime of 107 minutes and is rated R for language and some sexual references.