Returning to Sundance, the place her debut function Circumstance premiered in 2011, Iranian-American writer-director Maryam Keshavarz enters the pageant’s U.S. Dramatic Competitors with a crowd-pleasing quasi-autobiographical comedy-drama, The Persian Model.

A multi-generational household story that spans roughly 60 years, two continents and diverse cultures from conventional Muslim households to queer New Yorkers, this vigorous, likable, if considerably on-the-nose work grabs viewer consideration with fourth-wall-breaking monologues, jocular explanatory graphics, and tightly choreographed dance numbers to classic American and Iranian pop songs. The expansive ensemble is led by Layla Mohammadi enjoying the director’s alter ego Leila and Niousha Noor as her immigrant mom Shirin, who, within the method of traditional melodrama, conflict however be taught to respect each other by the top after secrets and techniques are revealed in prolonged flashbacks.

The movie’s current tense is someplace within the early 2000s, its locus Brooklyn, downtown Manhattan and Jersey Metropolis, the place protagonist and someday narrator Leila grew up with Shirin for a mom, physician Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand) for a dad and eight older brothers. That gaggle of siblings get fast, thumbnail introductions, however it’s clear from the beginning that their operate is to be one thing of a babbling refrain of mildly buffoonish boys.

Though she was an educational star at school, the now twentysomething Leila is pursuing her objective of changing into a filmmaker. That single-minded concentrate on her profession has already undone her brief marriage to Elena (Mia Foo), leaving Leila free to take pleasure in no-strings hook-ups. For instance, she will get it on with Maxmilian (Tom Byrne), an English actor in New York enjoying the title position in Hedwig and the Indignant Inch, after a Halloween social gathering the place he was wearing his stage drag costume and he or she was carrying a skimpy but revealing “burka-kini.”

However their tryst results in an sudden consequence, which is able to awkwardly deliver Max into the household fold across the similar time everyone seems to be anxiously ready for Ali Reza to get well from a coronary heart transplant. This well being disaster brings the numerous brothers again house to assist hold watch on the hospital with Shirin whereas Leila largely stays house to cook dinner for her grandmother Mamanjoon (Bella Ward), a pleasant biddy who likes dancing together with her granddaughter and is seen typically advising her in flashbacks to have anal intercourse with males in an effort to protect her hymen for marriage. Mamanjoon’s informal point out of a household scandal involving Leila’s mother and father again in Iran earlier than they immigrated piques the younger girl’s curiosity.

Progressively, the movie shifts focus from Leila to Shirin, and we see vignettes explaining how, ever the mistress of multitasking, she earned a GED and a realtor’s license concurrently in an effort to usher in further revenue. A pure wiz at enterprise, Shirin excelled at gross sales and helped to seed a Little India neighborhood in New Jersey because of her savvy dealing with of immigrant prospects. However it seems that every one that point she’s been haunted by a trauma from her previous, which is acted out in scenes of a teenage Shirin (first-time actor Kamand Shafiesabet, an actual discover), solely 13 years-old when she will get married off to Ali Reza (Shervin Alenabi) and strikes to his village.

The movie was shot in Turkey; Keshavarz explains in a director’s assertion that she was banned from returning to Iran after the final function movie she shot there. The scenes in Farsi, with their dance numbers and punchy humor, really feel very totally different from the movies made by Iranian filmmakers we’re used to seeing. Whereas acknowledging the oppression of girls throughout the tradition, and the heavy burden of custom (taking pictures for this movie completed simply earlier than the Mahsa Amini protests in opposition to hijab legal guidelines and the ethical police kicked off), there’s not one of the slow-paced, self-serious ponderousness that’s endemic within the work by big-name Iranian auteurs. Often, Keshavarz lets the comedy get somewhat too broad — for instance within the closing scene, the place virtually everybody within the film will get crowded right into a hospital room directly — however even then the movie’s infectious, fizzy power is tough to withstand.