Film Review: THE PERSIAN VERSION (2023): Maryam Keshavarz’s Tearjerker is Full of Heart and Wise Observations About Life

The Persian Version Review

The Persian Version (2023) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz and starring Layla Mohammadi, Niousha Noor, Kamand Shafieisabet, Bijan Daneshmand, Bella Warda, Sachli Gholamalizad, Chiara Stella, Shervin Alenabi, Jerry Habibi, Arty Froushan, Tom Byrne, Reza Diako, Parsa Kaffash, Mia Foo, Andrew Malik, Parmida Vand, Ash Goldeh and Samuel Tehrani.

Maryam Keshavarz’s dramatic film, The Persian Version, is chock full of light moments but they end up coming together in a way that ends up being a bit heavier than was anticipated from the picture’s opening scenes. Like reality, Keshavarz’s movie offers no easy answers to the unpredictable nature regarding the way life plays out. In this film, Layla Mohammadi shines in a leading role as the rebellious Leila, an Iranian writer in Brooklyn whose family lives in New Jersey. Leila starts out by having a sexual encounter with a drag queen (Tom Byrne) right as we begin to get to know her. Keep in mind that she’s a lesbian and you will know that there will be a lot of complexity in this sometimes humorous movie.

Some of the cutest scenes in the movie focus on the young Leila (a delightful Chiara Stella). She sneaks American music into her country in a hilariously funny way. When Leila gets down with her family in her homeland to dance to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” it’s a beautifully orchestrated and choreographed scene and audiences will enjoy this scene immensely.

Leila is fleshed out by both actresses who play her but Mohammadi, especially, digs deep inside the character as she questions her family’s values and tries to be independent as a woman and as an artist (through her writing). A funny sequence has Leila encountering her former romantic partner in a store and Leila disguises herself in a gorilla mask to try to cope with the eventual rejection she will face.

Niousha Noor is great as Leila’s mom, Shireen, who had to deal with financial difficulty and worked hard to get her GED to help support her family. Shireen becomes a real estate agent and Noor transforms before the audience’s eyes from a helpless housewife to a woman of great strength and determination who not only sells homes but changes her customer’s lives. Shireen and Leila don’t always get along and it’s a cop-out for Leila to blame her mother for the way Leila’s unpredictable life turned out. The plot thickens when Leila learns she is pregnant thanks to her encounter with the aforementioned drag queen.

Tom Byrne, as the drag queen Maximillian Balthazar, eventually becomes a player in the movie as Byrne’s character takes the female outfit and makeup off in order to try to be with Leila for the good of the baby which Leila plans to keep. The scenes with Byrne and Mohammadi are awkward but realistic portraying a type of situation that is improbable but possible.

The movie is at its most dramatic with the sequences surrounding the younger Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) who meets her husband young and suffers great loss when she has a baby who dies during birth. Shafieisabet is a fine young actress and is given a difficult role to play here. There are a lot of sensitive thematic elements here which feel lifted from another movie at times though they eventually tie into the picture successfully.

There are also touching moments between Leila and her grandmother, Mamanjoon (Bella Warda) who tells Leila to have sex a certain way which will not lead to her becoming pregnant. When Leila reveals her pregnancy, Mamanjoon hilariously reminds Leila of the advice she had given her earlier on. There is a nice scene of Mamanjoon and Leila dancing which is truly heartfelt. Bijan Daneshmand also turns in a sensitive performance as Leila’s dad who ends up in the hospital having to get an important procedure done.

The Persian Version is a really good movie but it’s flawed in certain respects that, luckily, don’t ruin the movie as a whole. There is a lot of back and forth between the timelines that the movie is set during and, sometimes, the picture feels like it covers a lot more territory than was necessary to tell this story. Still, by the time Leila’s family is running to the hospital to be by Leila’s side, you will be so won over by the material that it’s hard to notice these problems..

It’s rare to cry at the movies these days because only a handful of films can touch the heart successfully. I’ve seen a lot of movies and have built a resistance to movies which try too hard to tug at the heartstrings. The Persian Version is an earnest movie and earns the audience’s tears by the time the end credits come up. It’s sweet and tough at the same time, sort of like life itself. Mohammadi carries much of the movie but with performances like Noor’s and the actresses who play their younger counterparts, you’ll feel like these characters deserve the happiness they find by film’s end and will hope they maintain it. If you care that much about the characters, the filmmakers did something right. The Persian Version is thus recommended viewing.

Rating: 7.5/10

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