Sameir Ali Asghar Farhadi is one of the most influential foreign Directors today. About Elly, recognized his position in the film lovers of the world.The film starts with a usual family picnic. With a sweet tune, it goes through the fun and troubles we usually have during the picnic. By this time, all the characters are cool and equally imprinted on the audience. But, the sudden and unexpected disappearance of the title character changes the mood of the film. Every person's basic character comes out. All the little lies and made up stories comes back to them. This movie is different from the usual Iranian films. The beauty of an international Independent movie was can be seen.Don't miss this amazing movie. A must watch. #kiduMovie

morrison-dylan-fan 2010:Reading a leaflet from a local art house cinema,I was disappointed to find that I had just missed a screening of an Iran New Wave (INW) Thriller. Looking for the movie on DVD,the only result that turned up was one without English subtitles.2016:Finally getting the chance to see Asghar Farhadi's work in the haunting Drama The Past,I was thrilled to discover that the BBC were to show one of his earlier works,which led to me getting set to at last meet Elly.The plot:Going on a three day holiday,school friends/ couples Sepideh,Amir, Shohreh, Peyman, Nazy and Nazy's husband Manuchehr decide to take their children along on the trip. Aware that the recently divorced Ahmad if flying in from Germany to join them on the break, Sepideh pushes her daughters kindergarten teacher Elly to join them,in the hope that she will woo Ahmad. Arriving at the beach villa,the gang find the place to have no phone reception and to be in the middle of nowhere. Wanting to keep things secret,Elly travels to town and calls her mum to lie about what's taking place.Fearful that Elly could run off early, Sepideh hides her bags. Wanting to spend some time on their own,the gang ask Elly to look after the kids on the beach.Relaxing,the gang is shaken by the scream of a child floating away on the sea,and the discovery that Elly has disappeared into thin air.View on the film:Keeping what awaits them at bay,co-writer/(along with Azad Jafarian) directing auteur Asghar Farhadi & cinematographer Hossein Jafarian give the opening 45 minutes a laid-back attitude,where the camera drifts along to snippets of casual dialogue.Riding the waves of dread with INW tracking shots cracking over the ocean, Farhadi breaks the calm with an atmosphere running on high anxiety,as stylish camera moves sweep the ocean for any sight of Elly. Making a sandcastle for his major visual themes, Farhadi lays the villa bare,subtly matching the bare soul of each guest,caught in draining close-ups and clipped dialogue out of earshot, capturing the emotional,darkly thrilling waves.Initially looking like a nice holiday to the beach, the screenplay by Farhadi and Jafarian chips away at the calm and taps into the pure Noir terror,brilliantly bringing the fracturing state of each relationship to the surface. Finding no sign of Elly on the sea,the writers' strike a chilling mood with an expert deconstruction of Elly's disappearance leading to powerfully raw questions on treating words with a minimal value and the drastic measures people will take to keep a lie in place.Twisting Elly's arm to come along, Golshifteh Farahani gives a divesting performance as Sepideh,whose face is drawn by Farahani in lines of disperse,and a desperation to grasp any sign of hope. Flying in from Germany, Shahab Hosseini gives a magnificent performance as Ahmad,by Hosseini keeping the lingering sting from Ahmad's divorce very real,in a film about Elly.

gjainroorkee A disappointment of gargantuan proportions. The ending is really really sad and it makes you want to bang your head against the wall. It makes you wonder what was the point of the whole movie. An anti-climactic ending, to put it extremely mildly. The movie trudges along slowly but the only thing that kept me going was that if the movie has an 8.1 rating, it might have an ending like "The Sixth Sense" or "The Illusionist" to make all the past 90-120 minutes worthwhile. But the ending was a dud, so the movie gets a measly 1 star rating for me. The universe would have been a better place without this movie. I wonder how many man-hours have been wasted all over the world over this movie. The script-writer of this movie should be made to dig his own grave until he dies of exhaustion in the same very pit. Say NO to such movies. I have got a very special set of skills that I am gonna use to find all such script-writers and....you know what I am talking about.

Red-125 The Iranian movie Darbareye Elly was show in the U.S. with the title About Elly (2009). It was written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. This excellent movie has been presented as a mystery, but I don't see it that way. I see it more as a film about the interaction of group of friends getting away from the constraints of Tehran to a vacation area on the Caspian Sea. The only person who is not part of the group of friends is a kindergarten teacher, Elly. She teaches the daughter of one of the friends in her class. A member of the group is back from his home in Germany, and has asked one of the women to help him find a wife. The unofficial leader of the group--Sepidah--suggests that Elly come along to meet this man. Elly is reluctant--for reasons we don't understand--but she finally decides to go along with the plan. However, after the first day, she wants to go home. What happens next isn't so much a mystery as it is a study of a group of friends responding to what may well be a tragedy.Taraneh Alidoosti plays Elly. Alidoosti has been named the greatest Iranian woman actor of the decade. (She may also be the most beautiful.) However, the real star of the movie is Golshifteh Farahani as Sepideh. Sepideh is obsessed with keeping Elly at the resort, and when things turn sour, she is obsessed with trying to hold the group together and make the best of the situation. Whether she will ever again be accepted as the group's unofficial leader is uncertain. Whether the group will even keep together is another uncertainty.My spouse pointed out that the ensemble acting in this movie is amazing. We expect it from "Friends," because that group of actors worked together year after year. But how did director Farhadi get such superb acting from a dozen actors who have never acted together as a group? I assume the answer is an immensely talented director working with highly skilled professional actors.The person who introduced the film is from Iran. She pointed out some very important facts that we would not have otherwise known. For example, the Caspian Sea is renowned in Iran as a attractive, exotic resort area. On the other hand, the surf is extremely treacherous. So the area is not only beautiful, but also dangerous.The introducer also remarked how difficult it is for sophisticated, educated people to maintain a sense of identity in the repressive culture of theocratic Iran. One aspect is that people lie easily, because telling the truth can sometimes lead to serious trouble. Everyone lies easily, even on minor matters. (They don't lie very well, but they still lie all the time.)We saw this film in the wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. Some of the sea scenes will work better on the large screen, but the film will work on the small screen as well. Find it and see it!P.S. As I write this review, About Elly has an excellent IMDb rating of 8.1. I love to see a great movie appreciated by the IMDb audience.