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READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN – Review by Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin , , , , , , , ,
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Reading Lolita in Tehran is Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis’ adaptation of Iranian-American best-selling author and professor of English Azar Nafisi’s acclaimed eponymous memoir about her own experienceds and women’s lives and prospects in post-revolutionary Iran. In the film, Nafisi (brilliantly played by Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband return from America to Iran believing that their beloved homeland has been democratized and is entering a new era of political and cultural freedom.

Hired to teach English literature at Tehran’s University of Allameh Tabatabei, Nafisi soon finds that her expectations of cultural freedom are far from the reality of dsy to day life in Iran. She is required to wear a hajib and manto to enter the university. Worse yet, most of her male students are fundamentalists who object to the literary works she is assigning to them for study. Vladimir Nobokov’s Lolita is one of them. The male students’ objections turn into their casting aspersions on Nafisi’s character and morality, and threaatening her. Resisting their attacks, Nafisi realizes, is pointless and dangerous.

She quits the university and invites a group of her female students to join a secret reading/study circle that meets in her home for open and honest literary discussions and spirit sustaining personal storytelling over tea and sweets! Measuring their own experiences and expectations against those of the literary heroines they meet in the selected books, the women are able to freely talk about the repression they suffer and to discuss their options. Knowing all the while that their private gathering is illegal. To get to Nafisi’s home, they must slip past religious militia who are ready to detain or beat women for any percieved infraction of the religion-based protocols for women. And they face dire consequences if their circle is discovered. The film is galvanizing and heartwrenching. It is timely and relatable. A must see!

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).