Maryam Review
Adolescent struggles are a common topic in film, handled with various levels of success. Add in a teenager of Iranian descent, caught in the strange position of trying to assimilate to the only culture she's ever known, and Ramin_Serry's Maryam becomes a thoughtful and provocative film. Newcomer Mariam_Parris is brilliant in the title role, clearly hurt by the taunts of the popular girls, who make cruel remarks that she "needs to shave," mostly because they are threatened by her appeal to a cute classmate. But the strength of Parris' performance is the casual air with which she deflects these comments. And the complexity of the performance is that, like many ill-treated minorities, she has internalized a certain amount of self-loathing. When her strict father (Shaun_Toub) picks her up from an after-school activity, interrupting the event in his old-world, humorless manner, she mocks his too-Iranian ways in a fashion that goes beyond the usual embarrassment a child feels toward a parent. Maryam proves herself a smart young woman as the film progresses, maturely addressing the festering issues in her family's history and the growing distrust of her schoolmates and neighbors. The film occasionally feels a bit like an after-school special, but Serry, himself Iranian-American, explores a fascinating crisis point in U.S. history from a unique perspective, and the characters are rendered with sensitivity, so that even the bullies' foibles are understandably human. The subject matter made Maryam a hard sell to distributors, but audiences able to seek it out at festivals or in other contexts will be richly rewarded. Derek Armstrong, Rovi
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