A stranger among friends

ABOUT ELLY (2009)
Written & directed by Asghar Farhadi

Here is a movie that tells it like it is. Just what “it” is, however, becomes increasingly unclear. When Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) tells the beach caretaker that among her companions is a pair of newlyweds, we dismiss it as a harmless lie to wangle the group an accommodation. So what if the only available house is dirty, the windows broken? It sure beats driving all the way back to Tehran.

Besides, if everything goes according to Sepideh’s plan, a shared future is in the works for her friend Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), who is visiting from Germany, and Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), her daughter’s teacher, whom she has dragged along on the trip for that express purpose. This comes as a surprise to the rest of the group, but she assures them that they’ll love Elly; they’ll see.

We like Elly, all right. She’s pretty, patient with children, unfazed by domestic chores. A trifle reserved, perhaps, but what did you expect? She’s a stranger among old friends and they’re shameless matchmakers. They don’t seem bothered that Ahmad is newly divorced or that they’re having too much fun at the expense of their guest. But surely that’s how it is with friends, no? Ahmad could have done worse choosing his. We can tell that they’re good people who enjoy each other’s company. Elly would fit right in. A few days at the beach should take care of that.

The idyll is shattered on the second day. A child nearly drowns and Elly, who was supposed to be watching the children, goes missing. A panicked search ensues, police arrive, and during the investigation everybody comes to realize that they know next to nothing about Elly, Sepideh included.

Or does she? Consider how, in one scene, her husband Amir (Mani Haghighi) all-too readily accuses her of lying and has to be restrained from beating her up. His reaction seems extreme at first, but then every time Sepideh finds herself in a corner, she admits to a lie. Was Amir on to something after all?

To be fair, everyone in this movie lies. They all agree to lie to Elly’s mother, for example, for reasons even those in the audience would find justifiable. With Sepideh, who knows? She confesses to one too many lies. By the time she comes face-to-face with someone who knows Elly with any reasonable certainty, we are left wondering if she’s telling the truth (no matter how horrible) to finally come clean, or if she’s lying out of sheer malice.

This is a gripping, thought-provoking film, well-acted and beautifully photographed. The director, Asghar Farhadi, tells a straightforward story. He follows his characters, never lets the camera intrude, and provides no visual or musical cues (there is virtually no music, save for some incidental singing) to tell us what these characters don’t already know. The tragedy blindsides them as it does the audience, but the bigger tragedy is that they do what they do because they think their actions sensible. We see where they are coming from, but Sepideh — she’s something else, all right. In the closing shot, a car is stuck on the beach as the tide rushes in. It’s tempting to see the image as symbolic, except we know how the car got there; that it is there because what happened, happened, and it had needed to be there. If only human nature were that easy to comprehend.