About Elly From Iran
About Elly is from Iran. It is has received great reviews for its suspense and cinematography along the seaside coast. Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, there is little violence and some stunning visual settings. It shows that Iran, like America, have similar interests when the governments are not involved. Things like a 3-day vacation when people want to get away from the city and head for the country to camp or kick back at a beach house with kids. People are people wherever you go. Mankind have more similarities than not no matter where you are from.
About Elly to the American audience seems extreme and shows what cultural differences there are between the societies. The basic theme is a group of friends with kids are getting away from the city for a short weekend. They invite a woman who they only casually know. She is a friend of another but more of just an acquaintance. The woman who invites her is secretly trying to be a matchmaker for a man from Germany on vacation. The other members of group know very little about Elly.
The caravan of three cars travel through the countryside trying to find a campsite, to no avail. After all, it is three day weekend and everyone has the same idea. All the campsites along the river park are gone and they luck out finding a dilapidated house along the sea. Not the best place, but, the only place left. They start cleaning it and so on. Elly, at times, takes phone calls in secret. People wonder. There is obvious teasing and overtures by the others to get the man and Elly together. He is cautiously interested and she is aloof, so he is careful. Elly is quite guarded about her personal details during their conversations.
The movie pace seems to stall when suddenly Elly disappears. One minute she is watching the kids in the ocean, the next, the boy is running in screaming Elly is gone. The rest of the movie is about a frantic search for her, blaming others, lots of discussion about who she is, why would she just vanish, trying to find out where she went. The dialogue is interesting, so you will not get bored. Different personalities come into play, a husband beats his wife for lying until others intervene.
You see, Elly was involved with another man, her fiance. But, she decided not to marry him after the engagement was announced. She went on the trip just to get away and think about the dilemma and told lies about where she was going to her mother etc. At first, the group tries to fabricate her disappearance to the fiance who they informed. After that failed, the truth slowly came out and blame on the woman who invited her, who knew this. The movie ends with police finding her body in the ocean.
Elly had killed herself because of shame. I guess in Iran, it is a dishonor and shameful for a woman to break off an engagement to marriage. Feeling so badly, she committed suicide instead of facing the wrath of family opinion.
So, Americans might think this is stupid reason for one to kill themselves for it happens all the time here and people just move on. It is hard to comprehend why their culture is like this, but that is what About Elly is all about.
