Persepolis / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation
- Did the Satrapis rescue Mehridia from dire poverty, giving the girl a far better life than the one she had in her destitute village? Or did they take advantage of Mehridia's vulnerable position in order to use her as a child maid?
- Julie mentions losing her virginity at only 13 years old and almost exclusively dates men older than her. Is she merely sexually enlightened and having a lot of sex because she enjoys it? Or does she have psychosexual/abandonment issues that she's acting out on? Or is she just exaggerating? Marjane doesn't know nor would we.
Animation Age Ghetto: Downplayed. The subject matter and art style relegated the film’s U.S. release to art house cinemas, but it has a respectable reputation as an animated film explicitly not for children; with even some highschools playing the film.
Award Snub: Lost the "Best Animated Feature" award to Ratatouille, which was certainly no slouch either. Humorously enough, this is the second time Pixar beat out a French film for the award.
Crosses the Line Twice: Kia's joke about a soldier who gets put back together after an explosion and gets his penis attached to the wrong spot? Not funny. The soldier Comically Missing the Point and babbling to his wife "But look, it still works!" Now it's funny.
Ending Fatigue: Despite being a very good movie, most people will admit that it drags towards the ending.
Fridge Horror: By a certain point, the Satrapis have a new maid and Mehri isn't seen or mentioned again. Being illiterate, it's unlikely she got another job and, since she lived with the Satrapis since she was about 10, it's not like she had anywhere else to go to nor is it mentioned if her bio-family is still alive (or will take her back). What happened to Mehri?
Friendly Fandoms: A lot of people who enjoy Persepolis also like The Breadwinner, largely due to similar themes and topics (albeit in Afghanistan).
Harsher in Hindsight: Marjane recalls an instance from around the time of the Gulf War where her father lambasted the West for bailing out a wealthy, oil-rich country like Kuwait and dressing it up with the language of "human rights" while letting a far poorer country like Afghanistan rot. Afghanistan. Yeah.
Jerkass Woobie: Mehridia in the graphic novel. While the narrator's childhood flashbacks suggest that Mehridia was an unpleasant little girl (i.e., eating Marjane's food, ignoring Marjane to play on the swings, despite moments of affection for Marjane), it's difficult not to pity her. Mehridia was born in a destitute village, then adopted by the Satrapis and taken far from her family. While the Satrapis did feed and clothe her, they kept her out of school and exploited her as an underage maid. Marjane's mother tried unsuccessfully to teach the girl how to read, suggesting that Mehridia may have had learning disabilities that went untreated. When she developed a crush on a neighborhood boy, Marjane's father thwarted her efforts to woo him. The adolescent Mehridia we see is illiterate, sheltered, and lonely.
Narm Charm: The Training Montage part is still pretty awesome despite Marjane singing 'Eye of the Tiger' off key in that scene.
Values Dissonance: Marjane starts smoking when she's a teenager, and in Vienna tries drugs after a few years of faking it to avoid "becoming a vegetable". To this day she is a smoker in real life, and dislikes the smoking bans that Europe has started to enact.
Values Resonance: The book was published a year before 9/11. The racism, preconceived notions, and prejudice towards Middle Eastern people (and Islam, as a religion) in America that came about in the aftermath — and, sadly, continues to this day — give the book's humanized depiction of people living in the region significantly more teeth. This is at least one reason that the animated version (released in 2007, four years into The War on Terror) was so well-regarded.
Woolseyism: In the film there's a scene where a man rudely says, "Hé, je te parle!" ("Hey, I'm talking to you!") to Marjane's mother, who corrects him with "je vous parle." The literal translation is the same, but the latter uses the plural form of 'you' instead of the singular, which in French is the polite way to talk to someone you don't know. [1] The subtitles translate this as him saying, "Hey, woman!" and her saying, "You don't say 'woman', you say ma'am."
- While the comics depict the above scene differently, this still becomes an issue at points. For example, when Marjane first meets Réza at the party, the French edition has Réza asking Marjane something to the effect of, "ça va si on se tutoie?"^note The English translation just has Réza saying something along the lines of, "hey again".
The Woobie: Marjane, and her family as a whole. They and many Iranians were hoping that the revolution would undo the Shah's oppression, only to face an even worse regime. Marjane was only a child when she had to start wearing a veil, and a teenager when her parents sent her away. Then in Europe she has trouble assimilating, only to assimilate too well and nearly die from a "banal love affair" and drug addiction.

YMMV / Persepolis

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