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Persian Lessons

This is a functional, yet tension-building film set in an internment camp in France during the Second World War. A Belgian Jew, Gilles, played by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, trades a sandwich for an old Persian book, which turns out to save his life. Just prior to being shot, he proclaims to be Persian, not Jewish. Luckily, one of the local camp commandants is looking for a Persian to teach him lessons, and thus begins the high stakes bluff. Haupsturmführer Klaus Koch, played by Lars Eidinger, wants to open a restaurant in Tehran after the war and is eager to learn the language before he gets there. His excitement is moderated slightly by his suspicion that Gilles - or Reza, as he calls himself - is a fraud.

The beats are all here. After some initial hesitancy, Koch accepts the likelihood that Reza is legit, but then a word (invented by Reza) is repeated and Koch loses his shit. Reza convinces Koch that some words can have two meanings, and things return to an uneasy balance. Until the next dip on the tension rollercoaster when an English airman of PERSIAN descent is brought to the camp. The filmed events are exciting but there's an equal amount of satisfaction to be gained from the performances, especially of Eidinger and Biscayart. They spark off each other, their nerves are bristling to snap out - both of them being somewhat weak, maligned men. Koch worries that he'll lose the respect of his colleagues, though Reza obviously stands to lose much more should he be found out. They get additional support from Jonas Nay, Leonie Benesch and Alexander Beyer, but the spotlight is trained on Biscayart and Eidinger, and rightly so.

Much of my enjoyment came from the invention of the 'Farsi' language. At first, Reza is tasked with teaching Koch a new word every day, then more and more. Bread is 'radj', wind is 'lom', and so on. He stumbles upon a mnemonic method of remembering these words - by using the names of camp prisoners he is forced to record in Koch's ledger. This ultimately pays off in the emotional climax where he's being interviewed by Allied officers about his time in the camp. Writer Ilja Zofin (adapting from a novella) and director Vadim Perelman have turned out a nerve-wracking, moving, fresh angle on the Jewish experience in WW2.

[Added notes - Eidinger looks like a slightly less chiselled, young William Hurt. And Night Watch director, Timur Bekmambetov was a producer on this.]

Persian Lessons is screening now at the Luna.

See also:

Perelman's first feature was the underrated House of Sand and Fog (2003), and Eidinger was also great in The Bloom of Yesterday (2016), directed by Chris Kraus.

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