“So, Carmen, what do you think the movie was all about?” I somehow love this kind of question, especially when it comes from someone who already knows the film. If there is anything better than watching a movie, it is doing it with someone with whom the view is worth sharing. “About Elly,” I said, and that was precisely the name of it. Not the first one I had watched by Asghar Farhadi, but the first one I could actually tune in with.
Elly’s story is the caption of a crossroads, or maybe it is more the narration of what happens after it. After the straight line has split and you take right instead of left, the story of those few steps, the gap of time before you know you messed it up or you succeeded. Elly is a short-lasting character, someone slightly different from the first scene, she doesn’t belong to the cast, she doesn’t belong to that trip, she doesn’t laugh at the same time and she’s somehow not sure if she should have taken that road or the other instead.
Flying a kite is not a simple matter, nor an easy scene to film. It requires the right distance, a smooth movement technique, and the sound has to be present since you cannot photograph the wind. But when Elly holds the thread, the kite is not there anymore, not even the breeze or the Caspian shore, just her, laughing deliriously, her desperation to be free, her last chance for happiness, tugging the string.
It doesn’t matter how worthy or unavoidable, a risk will always imply chances of failing, otherwise it wouldn’t be a risk. The tale that dreamers don’t want to hear, the lines that true braves already know, the full list of consequences, the remainder of the existance of losses and many other possible facts that we are forced to omit if we ever want to fly a kite. That’s it about Elly and this film. Let's give it a two and a half.
