SHAHBAZ NOSHIR AND GOLSHIFTEH FARHANI IN READING LOLITA IN TEHERAN

A popular memoir adapted

The title's the thing. In fact there is not much more to add: Reading Lolita in Tehran, regardless of the stakes, is like a trip to Mars. And it would be like that in many countries lacking modern culture or a knowledge of western literature. It is perhaps its universality that made the original book by Azar Nafisi, which tells her own personal story, become a New York Times bestseller for eighteen months and be translated from its original English into thirty-two other languages.

A quote from a French review: "'Reading Lolita in Tehran' is an important film because of its subject matter. But the style is very conventional and flat. You can predict everything in this ‘Dead Poets Society’ set in Tehran; it is so theoretical that it becomes tedious." However, it depends how you relate to the content. If like myself you've taught English literature in the Middle East and note how much the stakes are raised in post-revolutionary Iran, where friends are getting executed for "treason", the action is pretty effective. And consider that the main character, a western-educated Iranian woman teacher of English literature after the revolution, is played by the formidable, soulful, gorgeous Golshifteh Farahani, for whom, whatever limitations the film may have, this is a great role: mentor, teacher, inspiration of smart (and beautiful) young Iranian women. This can be a film anyone interested in cross-cultural interchange and intellectual repression can find rather gripping. But not very personal.

There are people, though. These include Bijan (the excessively cute Arash Marandi), Azar's husband; "the Magician" (Shahbaz Noshir), her older male intellectual soulmate; and the seven students in her secret class, Sanaz (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), Nassrin (Mina Kavani), Mahshid (Bahar Beihaghi), Yassi (Isabella Nefar), Manna (Raha Rahbari), Azin (Lara WolfMahtab), and Mahtab (Catayoune Ahmad).

They don't publish books or make movies like this in Iran, and this film was made in Rome, with a Teheran mockup at Cinecittà. But it's based on a book about real personal experiences. The author, after the Iranian revolution, had returned to Iran's capital city to impart her studies abroad in English and American literature to university students. Then the repression comes. We feel the shock of it. She is told she must wear the chador. She revolts. It is useless. Her class is closed. She resigns from the university. A good friend is executed, one of eight tried for radicalism. A student she knows and we know commits a dramatic suicide.

When she gives up the university, she resorts to private sessions, a secret class of favored women students at her own home. She had been attacked in large classes for teaching Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and Henry James's Daisy Miller and Washington Square (some of these are used for chapters of the film). In the safety of her home, it all becomes easier. Well, no; it doesn't, really. This is still Iran. The young women simply can be more outspoken. The tensions are just as visible. Those intense discussions are the heart of the memoir and the film. There is not much time to talk of Lolita, really. And so once again another film about a class doesn't capture much of the class.

Azar keeps having nightmares every night but argues to everyone that Bijan, who has work as a civil engineer, and she will not leave Iran (and we know it usually involves a dangerous journey and smugglers to do so: for a nice oblique picture of this see Panah Panahi's 2021 debut feature Hit the Road). Nonetheless Azar Nafisi and her family do come to the US in 1997; the film skips the treacherous journey and jumps to the family in 2005 in Washington, DC. She got a book deal and began writing her memoir in 1999, published it in 2003. And so this becomes one of those snake-biting-its-tail movies that winds up being about how Azar Nafisi became a spokesperson about how she became herself. The exciting parts are when she is struggling with her class at the university and sharing the intimacy of her secret class of seven passionate (and almost distinguishable) young women. Not this, not the D.C. memorial skyline Trump is trying to ruin that opens the last chapter. The story is elsewhere; but this is where it has to end.

Eran Riklis is an Israeli director born in Jerusalem in 1954, known for directing "humanistic, politically nuanced, and award-winning international films." They can be a little generic because they're so issue-based but they are very sincere and importnat, and that's true here. (Two I've written about previously are the 2008 Lemon Tree and 2014's A Borrowed Identity.) There is not much room for the truly personal in this story. But it is a necessary story and a popular book, ten million copies sold worldwide. So now you can both see it and read that book. The two experiences aren't commensurate but they enhance each other.

Reading Lolita in Teheran, 107 mins., premiered at Rome Oct. 19, 2024, also at a few other festivals. US release and distribution by Greenwich Entertainment Jul. 10, 2026 in New York, July 17; West Coast and select locations, Ju. 17.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.