About Elly (2009)

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

Director:

Asghar Farhadi

Writers:

Asghar Farhadi (screenplay), Azad Jafarian (story)

Stars:

Golshifteh Farahani, Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti

16 wins & 13 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Golshifteh Farahani	...	Sepideh
Shahab Hosseini	...	Ahmad
Taraneh Alidoosti	...	Elly
Merila Zare'i	...	Shohreh
Mani Haghighi	...	Amir
Payman Maadi	...	Peyman (as Peyman Moaadi)
Ra'na Azadivar	...	Naazi
Ahmad Mehranfar	...	Manoochehr
Saber Abar	...	Alireza (as Saber Abbar)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Amin Salahloo	...	Kamal
Mohammad Tiregar

Storyline

A group of middle-class friends travel from Tehran to spend the weekend at the seaside. Sepideh invites Elly, who is her daughter's teacher, to travel with the three families in order to introduce her to their recently divorced friend Ahmad, now living in Germany. The next morning, the two women go shopping in the town and Elly says that she has to return to Tehran because her mother has been recently submitted to hospital for heart surgery, but Sepideh asks her to stay and hides her luggage. The children are playing in the sea and one mother asks Elly to watch them. Out of the blue, Sepideh's daughter calls to some men playing volleyball to rescue one of the children from the water. After rescuing the little boy they seek out Elly, questioning whether she has drowned or returned to Tehran. What has happened to Elly?

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Plot Keywords:

two word title | friend | volleyball | iran | middle class | 

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Details

Official Sites:

sourehcinema

Country:

Iran France

Language:

Persian German

Release Date:

6 June 2009 (Iran)

Also Known As:

About Elly

Filming Locations:

Tonekabon, Mazandaran, Iran

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$13,180, 12 April 2015

Gross USA:

$470,760

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$878,642

Company Credits

Production Co:

Dreamlab

Technical Specs

Runtime:

119 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is Golshifteh Farahani's last movie in Iran, which she did after Body of Lies (2008) by Ridley Scott.

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Goofs

When they decide to stay in the villa and start to clean it, Ahmad calls the boy (Omid) by name asking him about where he can find a vacuum cleaner. Seconds later, he asks the boy about his name.

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Quotes

Sepideh: Now, what does he think about Elly?

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Connections

References The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

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Soundtracks

Song For Eli
Written by Andrea Bauer

User Reviews

"She made me raise my hand to her!"

"Elly" seems like a rough sketch for "A Separation" (2011), one of the best films of this century IMHO. In both cases, Farhadi's focused on social lies and deceptions and the ways they come back to bite us—as well as on the contrasts and contradictions between the lives and aspirations of contemporary Iranians and the restrictive social norms of Islam—but "Elly"'s not as tightly plotted or as involving. In many ways it's like typical film-festival fare from a non-Western country—it's a little hard to keep track of the characters at first, and it's not always clear why they're behaving the way they do… The setup's intriguing: old college friends from Tehran—three married couples and their kids and a recent divorcé—and a slightly mysterious plus one, Elly, share a clapped-out weekend cottage on the Caspian Sea. At first everyone's acting goofy, singing and busting little Zorbalike dance moves.

Then something happens—two things really—and everything changes. The sky darkens, the sea gets rough, and husbands and wives are (almost literally in one case) at each other's throats. Suddenly these 21st-century sophisticates are chattering about evil portents and lost honor and fear of shaming; several layers of deception have to be unwrapped before the film's ambiguous ending. Expert cast (including the husband from "A Separation" and Nefertari from "Exodus: Gods and Kings"!); the performances seem a little over the top at times, but that may just be a cultural thing; great cinematography. Certainly worth watching, prob'ly more so if you've already seen "A Separation."