France gets animated over black and white take on Iranian revolution

Imagine a full-length, animated film with no lovable talking animals, no simple storyline and almost no colour. Imagine a cartoon movie about the Iranian revolution, seen through the eyes of Bruce Lee and an Abba-loving child who becomes a homesick teenager exiled in Europe. Just such an unlikely-sounding movie, Persepolis, went on general release to glowing reviews in France this week.

It is the first full-length, animated biopic of an "ordinary" life; or the first animated autobiography.

Marjane Satrapi has already made her experiences as an exiled middle class Iranian into a best-selling series of four cartoon books. In the film, her drawings come to life. Persepolis - which won the Prix du Jury at Cannes last month - is part of a movement to push animated movies beyond traditional boundaries.

In another respect, Persepolis tries to turn back the tide. The directors refused computer-generated images and reverted to laborious hand-copying of drawings.

There are a few minutes of partial colour at the beginning but the movie is mostly in monochrome.

The French language version has voiceovers by, among others, Catherine Deneuve. An English-language version is expected to be released in the autumn.

The film follows the life of Satrapi, from just before the Islamic revolution in 1979 to her exile in Austria and then France. She is the daughter of a wealthy, artistic, left-wing family. Her uncles are freed from the Shah's jails, only to be imprisoned by the mullahs.

The early part of the movie is stolen by her freedom-loving granny, who swears like a trooper, smokes opium and puts jasmine flowers down the front of her dress to "make her breasts smell nice".

Although politics are ever-present, it is not a political tract. Satrapi says: "I wanted the personal story, driven by the theme of exile, to be almost more important than the Big Story."

None of which prevented the Iranian government from saying the movie presents a "distorted" view of the Iranian revolution.