
            The film begins in an airport where Marjane Satrapi is unable to board a plane to Iran. Sitting down to smoke a cigarette, she remembers her life as a girl in 1978 at the age of 9. As a child, Marji is a young girl living in Tehran with dreams of being a prophet and an emulator of Bruce Lee. Juxtaposing her childhood ambitions is the general uprising against the US-backed Shah of Iran in Iran, with her middle-class family participating in rallies and protests with high hopes for a better society. Meanwhile, Marji attempts to identify with her generation's point of view, whether it is threatening the child of an unpopular government official, or competing for the greater childish prestige of having a relative who has been a political prisoner the longest time. Marji and a group of friends attempt to attack a young boy whose father killed Communists for fun, but they are stopped by her mother. That night, God appears before her to teach her about forgiveness, and about how she should not take justice into her own hands. One day Marji's Uncle Anoush arrives to have dinner with the family and catch with them after recently being released from prison. Anoush tells Marji his life on the run from the government for rebelling with his Communist ideologyhe also speaks of his time spent in prison to subtly warn Marjane of the consequences of standing up for innocents.During this time all political enemies ceased fighting and elections for a new leading power commenced. Unfortunately, the hopes of the family are profoundly disappointed when Islamic Fundamentalists win the elections and force Iranian society into its own kind of repressive state. Soon there are new laws that make things worse for the Iranian people, such as forcing women to dress modestly (including wearing the Hijab) to rearresting and executing Anoush for his political beliefs. Profoundly disillusioned, Marji rejects her prophetic aspirations before God and tries with her family to fit into the reality of the intolerant regime. To make things worse, the Iran-Iraq war breaks out and Marji sees for herself the horrors or death and destruction; the Iranian government begins implementing blatant laws that create ridiculous injustices. Marji witnesses her father threatened by teenage government officials wielding machine-guns and watches her critically ill uncle die because an unqualified government-appointed hospital administrator refuses to let him go abroad for medical treatment. The family tries to find some solace in secret parties where they can enjoy simple pleasures the government has outlawed, such as alcohol. As she grows up, Marji refuses to stay out of trouble, secretly buying Western heavy metal music on the black market, wearing unorthodox clothing such as a denim jacket, celebrating punk rock and other Western music sensations like Michael Jackson, or openly rebutting a teacher's lies about the abuses of the government.Fearing her arrest for her outspokenness, Marji's parents send her to a school in Vienna, Austria in 1983 where she could have safety and plenty. She is placed in a Christian boarding school when she arrives and soon finds herself on edge with the discriminatory and judgmental nuns that reside there. Marji does make new friends, but ultimately she feels intolerably isolated in a foreign land surrounded by annoyingly superficial people who take their freedoms for granted while making her feel ashamed of being Iranian. Her shame culminates in a passionate love affair with a debonair native that traumatically ends on her eighteenth birthday when she discovers him cheating on her. After going from place to place seeking residence, she is driven into homelessness where she nearly dies of bronchitis before she is rescued off the streets.Marji eventually recovers and returns to Iran in 1993 with her family's permission and hopes that the conclusion of the war would mean an improved life there. After a while of spending her time in front of television for days on end, doing nothing to advance her life, Marji falls into a clinical depression over the state of affairs in Iran and the misery that has nearly ruined her family. In a dream God and the spirit of Karl Marx appear before her to remind her of what is important and encourage her to go on with living. She bounces back with renewed determination and begins enjoying life again: she attends university classes, goes to parties, and even enters a relationship with a fellow student. On the other hand, Marji also discovers that Iranian society is more tyrannized than ever with numerous atrocities occurring. Mass executions for political beliefs and petty religious absurdities and hypocrisies have become common in everyday life. While this makes living as both a student and a woman intolerable, Marji manages holds on to her rebellious attitude. She openly confronts the blatant sexist double standard in her university's forum on public morality that singles out women and tells off policemen who warn her for running to class because her "behind makes obscene gestures" when she does so. However, she starts resorting to personal survival tactics to protect herself, such as falsely accusing a man of making a pass at her to avoid being arrested for wearing make up and marrying her boyfriend to avoid scrutiny by the religious police. Her grandmother reminds Marji that both her grandfather and her uncle both died supporting freedom and innocent people, and she should never forsake them or her family by succumbing to the repressive environment of Iran.Eventually her marriage falls apart and things come to a head when a party is raided by the police which results in a friend being killed trying to escape. After these incidents and her divorce, the family decides that Marji must leave the country again, and this time permanently, to avoid her being targeted by the authorities as a political dissident. Marji agrees, and her grandmother dies soon after her departure.Back to present day, Marji once again is unable to return to Iran, and she takes a taxi from the airport. When the driver asks where she is from, she sighs, "Iran". Her final memory is of her grandmother telling her how she placed jasmine in her brassiere to allow her to smell lovely every day.
    

Persepolis


            Ismael (Louis Garrel, the Gallic version of the adorable young Hugh Grant), lives with Julie (Ludivine Sagnier). Alice (Clotilde Hesme), who works with Ismael, shares their bed and Alice's affections. On a night of tragedy, Jeanne, unawares, hooks up with Gwendal (Yannick Renier), whose teen-aged brother Erwann (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) is the only one who can bring a shattered Ismael back to life, in the most romantic man-on-man love scene since Rupert Grave's Alec Scudder climbed through Maurice's bedroom window 20 years ago. With rain-slicked streets, coffee and cigarettes, references to a dozen French classics, a haunting score and the best balcony scene since "Romeo and Juliet," this low-budget charmer, which has become a cult favorite in France with the under-25 set, is an "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" for the 21st Century.
    

Love Songs


            
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The Girl with a Bracelet

Don't Forget You're Going to Die


            A day in the life of Dark Smith (James Duval) an 18-year-old, alienated Los Angeles high school film student who dreams of the "End of the World" and is obsessed with finding his true and lasting love before "the end" comes in order to get away from his nagging, working class mother (Beverly D'Angelo) whom he lives with. The object of Dark's affections, Mel (Rachel True), a bisexual African-American girl from where he goes to school, feels for him deeply but can't commit herself to any one person or gender, splitting her time between Dark and her curvaceous, purple-haired, acid-tonged, lesbian girlfriend Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Dark, meanwhile, becomes enthralled by the beauteous Montgomery (Nathan Bexton), a young, blond, homosexual with two different color eyes from his school who's literally "a vision to behold the golden California sun."On this typical Friday morning, Dark, Mel and Lucifer drive in Mel's car to The Hole, their local coffeehouse hangout for breafast. They pick up Montgomery, who's standing lonely at a bus stop also looking for a ride there. At the Hole, Dark meets and commiserates with his best friend, queer industrial rock star Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) who has troubles of his own: he can't find his boyfriend and band mate, Bart (Jeremy Jordan), who's on a self-destructive downward spiral that threatens both their romantic and musical partnership. Bart, at that very moment, is at the home of the scurvy, green-haired, drug dealer Handjob (Alan Boyce). Bart is far more interested in Handjob's wares than in the perversion of being offered by the dangerously sexy dominatrix duo of Kriss (Chiara Mastroianni) and Kozy (Debi Mazar), Handjob's live-in S&M girls.Also convening at The Hole for a "sugar gorge" are a trio of girls from where the gang also goes to school. They are the metal-mouthed, wisecracking Dingbat (Christina Applegate), the "brain" of the group; Montgomery's best friend Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), a poetess who warns him of the impending Armageddon which is supposedly happening tonight; and the meek and dewy Polly, nicknamed Egg (Sarah Lassez). While everyone is making plans to meet for that night's game of kick-the-can and the big blowout party happening later, the bulimic Egg is wooed in the girls restroom by a Teen Idol (Jaason Simmons from TV's "Baywatch") who is so famous that no one needs to utter his name. The Teen Idol offers to take Egg for a walk and she happily agrees.A little later outside The Hole, Egg's older brother Ducky (Scott Caan) arrives where Dingbat brings him up to date on his sister's budding romance with the Teen Idol. Oblivious to the fact that Dingbat has a crush on him, Ducky is googly-eyed over Alyssa. But she is head-over-heels for a Harley-straddling stud named Elvis (Thyme Lewis). Alyssa's torrid and kinky sex with Elvis at his apartment a little later gets an extra frisson from the psychic connection she shares with her self-destructive twin brother Shad (Ryan Phillippe), who at that moment is going at it with his luscious girlfriend Lilith (Heather Graham) after a fortune teller (Charlotte Rae) tells them about their impending deaths.While Mel and Lucifer race on the Venice boardwalk on their roller blades, Lucifer's sister Jana (Denise Richards), Jana's friend Shannon (Teresa Hill) and local hunk Noah (Kevin Light) watch them as they are modeling for a photo shoot on the beach.As the hot sun continues to beat down on Los Angeles, the weird stuff starts happening. While waiting at a corner bus stop to go home after classes, Dark watches agog as a trio of nattering Valley Girls (Traci Lords, Shannen Doherty, Rose McGowan) are vaporized by a raygun-toting Alien (Roscoe) who disappears before his eyes before he can film it with his video camera. Dark stands there wondering if was it real or just another acid flashback?And things go from bad to worse for Egg when the Teen Idol brings her to his place where, after she refuses his advances, the man suddenly flips out and transforms into a Mr. Hyde-type sex fiend who proceeds to rape and savagely beat her to a bloody stump.Bart, high on drugs, finally gives into Kriss and Kozy's demands for some fun and lets them do tasteless and other unspeakable things to him. At the same time, Mel sneaks into Dark's bedroom for a period of afternoon romantic sex, only to leave in a huff soon after.At the school baseball field that evening, Dark, Mel, Lucifer, Montgomery, Cowboy, Dingbat, and Ducky begin their game of kick-the-can; all of them high on halogenous to make the game more harder and interesting. Then Dark witnesses Montgomery vanish into thin air as well as the Alien lurking around the locker room where Montgomery was last seen. But Dark has no choice but to join the rest of his friends who are heading to the phantasmagorical party going on at the home of Jujyfruit (Gibby Haynes). Also at the party are two dumb fashion models named What (Devon Odessa) and Ever (Stacy Keanan) who are looking for some excitement.The only ones missing from the party are Egg and Bart, who are tucked in the sanctuary of their respective bedrooms, both of them bloodied and bowed by the unexpected encounters with danger. The devastated teens are each riveted to their TV sets, watching the mesmerizing cathode-ray vision of Moses Helper (John Ritter), a televangelist who hard-sells the eternal, everlasting salvation of Heaven. Bart's non-English-speaking Swedish parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sighvatssohn, (Christopher Knight and Eve Plumb) sit in front of their living room TV set and watch the news where the newscaster Julie (Lauren Tewes) talks about the hot dry weather over L.A., the unconfirmed alien abductions, and of the Atari Gang that the people are to beware of.As Egg and Bart succumb to the insidious exhortations of Moses Helper, and commit suicide (she by slashing her wrists and he by a gas oven), Jujyfruit's party cranks to full-blast.Meanwhile, Mel's little brother Zero (Joshua Gibran Mayweather) picks up his blond girlfriend Zoe (Mena Suvari) outside her apartment building and they drive through the city looking for Jujyfruit's party. Zero and Zoe follow a trio of scary looking drag queens (John Enos, Nicolette Gato, Brian Buzzini) on their way out of a convenience store, only to get lost on a back road. Zero and Zoe then come across Shad and Lilith in their car nearby. But they aren't very cooperative in giving Zero and Zoe directions to the party and they drive off. Things get even worse for the young couple when Zero and Zoe are accosted by the notorious Atari Gang (Aaron Smith, Tres Trash Temperilli, Sara Jane) roaming the city with automatic weapons made to look like video ray guns, who proceed to steal their car. After hitching a ride with Handjob and his girls, Zero and Zoe finally locate the party, wandering through the wild crowd like its a hallucinogenic version of Disneylands "Its a Small World" ride.But Dark is having no fun at all. Mel has just rejected both him and Lucifer to go off with Surf and Ski (Keith and Derek Brewer), a pair of blond-and-bronzed identical twins. Cowboy leaves the party and phones Bart's parents only to find out from the frantic, non-English speaking couple about finding their son with his head inside their gas oven. Also, Ducky gets a call on his cell phone from his father (David Leisure) who informs him about his sister Egg's terrible fate. Crazed with grief, Ducky leaps into the swimming pool and nearly drowns. But Ducky is saved by Dark and Dingbat who dive in after him. Going into the house to fetch a towel, Dark experiences yet another unsettling Alien sighting. Dark also walks into the kitchen to witness Elvis turning his murderous rage on Handjob by beating him to death with a tin can over him selling him and Allysa phony drugs.His day having reached its final low point, with Bart, Egg and Handjob dead, Elvis apparently on his way to jail, Montgomery and three girls kidnaped by an extraterrestrial, Ducky trying to drown himself, and Mel having abandoned him for good, Dark is left alone with nowhere to go... but home to bed for the night, where he encounters one final surprise: the reappearance of Montgomery who climes through his bedroom window. Montgomery tells Dark that he was abducted by aliens along with some other people who performed experiments on them. He asks Dark to lie in his bed with him for a while to sort out his thoughts. Dark asks Montgomery to never leave him, when suddenly Montgomery starts going into convulsions and his body explodes, splattering blood and body organs all over Dark's bedroom, revealing a huge, terrifying looking, beatle-like creature inside him. "I'm outta here," says the creature in Montgomery's voice, who crawls out the window. A blood splattered Dark sits on his bed too stunned to speak... and then screams.
    

Chiara Mastroianni

Chiara Mastroianni Movies or Tv Shows (upto Apr 2024) - Watch Online

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