Chicken with Plums (film)
Chicken with Plums | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Marjane Satrapi Vincent Paronnaud |
Produced by | Hengameh Panahi |
Screenplay by | Marjane Satrapi Vincent Paronnaud |
Based on | Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi |
Starring | Mathieu Amalric Edouard Baer Maria de Medeiros Golshifteh Farahani Eric Caravaca Chiara Mastroianni |
Cinematography | Christophe Beaucarne |
Edited by | Stéphane Roche |
Production
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Celluloïd Dreams, TheManipulators
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Distributed by | Le Pacte |
Release dates
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Running time
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94 minutes |
Country | France Germany Belgium |
Language | French English |
Budget | €12 million |
Chicken with Plums (French: Poulet aux prunes) is a 2011 French-German drama film directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.[1] It is based on the graphic novel of the same name. The film premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2011.[2] It was released in France on 26 October through Le Pacte.[3]
Plot
After his wife Faranguisse (Maria de Medeiros) becomes enraged at Nasser-Ali (Mathieu Amalric) for failing to take care of his children she takes his violin and smashes it. Nasser-Ali, a violinist, then goes on a quest to find a new violin but after purchasing a Stradivarius and attempting to play it he realizes that he has lost his will to play and therefore to live. After contemplating various methods of suicide he finally decides to take to his bed and simply die there.
While in bed he reflects on his life and images from his past and future play out before him. In a vision of the future his eldest daughter Lili marries a man her mother approves of, divorces him, and then has a passionate affair with an actor. After he dies of a heart attack Lili smokes, drinks and becomes addicted to gambling, eventually suffering three heart attacks and finally dying after the third. His younger son meanwhile ends up in America with multiple children and becomes a grandfather after his overweight daughter goes to the hospital with stomach pains and gives birth to a son she names Jimmy-Nassar.
In the midst of his attempts to die Faranguisse, finally concerned, cooks Nasser-Ali his favourite dish of chicken with plums. It is revealed that Faranguisse was in love with Nasser-Ali from the time she was a child and waited for him as he became a famous musician and toured the world. Upon his return his mother (Isabella Rossellini) pressured him to marry Faranguisse. Faranguisse attempts to feed Nasser-Ali the chicken with plums but he rejects it, reiterating that he will never forgive her for destroying his violin.
On the fifth day, finding himself still alive, he remembers that when his mother was dying she asked him to stop praying for her as his prayers were keeping her alive and he was in pain. When he stopped playing her soul became a cloud of smoke which appeared over her grave. As it turns out, Nassar-Ali's youngest son is praying for him.
On the sixth day he hallucinates that he sees the angel of death. Though Nassar-Ali tells the angel he has changed his mind, he tells Nassar-Ali it is too late.
On the final day of his life Nassar-Ali dreams of Irane (Golshifteh Farahani). Nassar-Ali met Irane while he was studying he violin and was told by his teacher that his technique was beautiful but his music lacked soul. Later Nassar-Ali saw Irane walking in the street and followed her to her father's clock store. Buying a clock from her father he damaged it multiple times so he could return to the store and bump into her. After falling in love Nassar-Ali proposes to Irane which she accepts. However her father forbids their marriage on the grounds that Nassar-Ali will be unable to financially take care of his daughter. Irane eventually accepts her father's wishes. Nassar-Ali is told by his music teacher that the heartbreak has finally managed to make him a great musician and is given a violin that belonged to his own teaching instructor. Nassar-Ali begins a twenty year tour of the world while Irane marries and has a child and eventually becomes a grandmother just as Nassar-Ali is marrying and having children.
After buying his replacement violin that Faranguisse broke Nassar-Ali runs into Irane who is walking with her grandson. After calling her name and asking if she remembers him Irane replies that he doesn't leaving him heartbroken. However Irane does remember him and after turning the corner she begins to cry.
Nassar-Ali finally dies on his eighth day in bed. Irane attends the funeral in secret.
Cast
- Isabella Rossellini as Nasser Ali Khan's mother
- Maria de Medeiros as Faranguisse
- Golshifteh Farahani as Irâne
- Mathieu Amalric as Nasser-Ali
- Jamel Debbouze as Houchang
- Chiara Mastroianni as Lili (as adult)
- Edouard Baer as Azraël
- Eric Caravaca as Abdi
- Didier Flamand as The Music Master
Production
The film has been 2010 completely shot in Germany at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. The backlot stood in for all the inside and outside scenes in that production.[4][5]
The film is a French-German coproduction between Celluloid Dreams (Hengameh Panahi) and TheManipulators (Joint Venture of Studio Babelsberg (Potsdam), Celluloid Dreams (Paris) and Clou Partners (Munich)). Partners are uFILM, Studio 37, ZDF, Arte, with the participation of Canal+ and Cinécinéma. The film was subsidized by de (DFFF, The German Federal Film Fund), medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Cinémage 5, uFund, Cinéart and Prokino.
Reception
Jay Weissberg wrote in Variety that "The same winning balance of seriousness and humor that made Persepolis such a hit works equally well in Chicken With Plums", and elaborated: "What Satrapi and Paronnaud have really achieved is an evocation of a lost world, much as they did in Persepolis. They've beautifully re-created the fiercely proud, Western-leaning life of the Persian middle class of the 1950s, all constructed in Berlin's Babelsberg studios with the kind of atmospheric quality of Fellini's Cinecitta-constructed Romagna[.] ... Though comparisons may be made with the exaggerated stylings of Amelie, the people in Chicken With Plums eventually lose that sense of artificiality, or rather it becomes superseded by real emotion."[6]
The Washington Times said it had "too much erotic content to make it past Iranian censors," but it did justice to the "subversive poetry of the Iranian cinema."[7] The New York Times said it was "captivating, but not exactly moving" and "more anecdotal than epic".[8] The Los Angeles Times said the tone and style lacked coherence, moving from "fairy tale to sitcom grotesquerie, silent comedy to Expressionist chiaroscuro."[9]
Awards
- 2013 - Best Feature Film Director (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud) at Noor Iranian Film Festival.
References
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- ↑ A Vivid Parable About The Ends of Things Mark Jenkins, NPR, 7 January 2014
- ↑ David Hudson Venice and Toronto 2011. Paronnaud and Satrapi's "Chicken with Plums" 3 September 2011, 7 January 2014
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Adam Mamzanian, Movie Review: ‘Chicken With Plums’: Film’s allegory rooted in history of Iran, The Washington Times, 13 September 2012
- ↑ A. O. Scott, Strings Coming Loose for a Violinist in Tehran: Movie Review: ‘Chicken With Plums,’ About Contemporary Iran, The New York Times, 16 August 2012
- ↑ Sheri Linden, Review: 'Chicken With Plums' is half-baked, The Los Angeles Times, 30 August 2012
External links
- Use dmy dates from August 2015
- Pages with broken file links
- 2011 films
- Articles containing French-language text
- Interlanguage link template link number
- 2010s drama films
- Belgian films
- French films
- French drama films
- French-language films
- Films about violins and violinists
- Films based on French comics
- Films directed by Marjane Satrapi
- Films directed by Vincent Paronnaud
- Films set in Iran
- Films shot in Germany
- German films
- Babelsberg Studio films