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About Elly (2009) | Movie Review | Deep Focus Review

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Asghar Farhadi asks questions about our capacity for deception in About Elly, his 2009 feature about a woman who goes missing on a short vacation outside of Tehran. If that setup rings a bell, the Iranian filmmaker has channeled Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura from 1960. Both films feature characters who lie out of self-preservation, whether it’s to avoid an embarrassing truth, protect their own ego, or acknowledge just how badly their dishonesty has snowballed. But where Antonioni sought to explore contemporary discontentment through his slow-cinema aesthetic, Farhadi’s film crackles with theatrical flair, delivering a chamber drama shot with a kinetic use of space and intimate camerawork. Similar to Farhadi’s other films, About Elly also features a sly critique of Iranian society in his portrait of class division and religious devotion; it explores how factors stemming from the Islamic faith perpetuate the situation. Ultimately, the film argues that “a bitter ending is better th

Reader's Choice About Elly By Brian Eggert | April 2, 2020 Asghar Farhadi asks questions about our capacity for deception in About Elly , his 2009 feature about a woman who goes missing on a short vacation outside of Tehran. If that setup rings a bell, the Iranian filmmaker has channeled Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura from 1960. Both films feature characters who lie out of self-preservation, whether it’s to avoid an embarrassing truth, protect their own ego, or acknowledge just how badly their dishonesty has snowballed. But where Antonioni sought to explore contemporary discontentment th

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