I must confess that I have always thought graphic novels were just comic books with literary pretensions. I casually dismissed them as a symptom of our culture’s increasing infantilisation; adults read books, children stories with pictures. Well, having seen Persepolis - a faithful translation of the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi - I’m happy to admit I was wrong.

Written and directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, this is pop culture’s equivalent of Dr Zhivago: a big, beautifully woven tale of the personal and the political. We get an engrossing history lesson about Iran that is full of bitter twists, broken dreams and human heartbreak, shaped as a family saga acted out against the historical backdrop of revolution, war and repression. It has heart, humour and the intimacy of the best-written of biographies.

The film starts out in Tehran in 1978.

The repressive Shah is locking up protesters and torturing dissidents to save his shaky grip on power. But what does precocious nine-year-old Marjane (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) care? She has the carefree existence of a little girl who loves Bruce Lee and french fries with ketchup.

Marjane’s politically active parents (Sean Penn voices her dad, Catherine Deneuve her mother) and her communist Uncle Anouche (Iggy Pop) are delighted when the Shah is eventually overthrown. “Whatever the outcome, it can’t be worse than the Shah,” says Uncle Anouche, who ends up being killed by the new regime of Islamic fundamentalists. On one level, the film is a tribute to Marjane’s family, to her wise and caring grandmother (Gena Rowlands) and to the bravery of her parents.

What the film dramatises so well is the difficulty parents face in trying to give their children a normal childhood during an abnormal time. Do we protect our children from the truth and tales of torture, or use these truths to help them grow?

Marjane is one of the great preteenage heroines in literature. Rebellious, inquisitive and opinionated, she is forever using her wits to hold onto her freedom. There’s something wonderful about seeing this young Iranian girl walking through the streets of Tehran with “Punk Is Not Ded” scrawled on her back. They may make her wear a veil over her head, but they can’t veil her mind.

As a young teenager, Marjane is sent off to a French school in Austria for her own safety. She soon teams up with a group of anarchists and nihilists, and the film becomes a funny coming-of-age story, as she struggles with her Iranian identity and the problems of fitting in. The homesick Marjane returns to a Tehran where you can’t party, drink, dress or think as you please. It’s a vivid and scary portrait of a modern totalitarian state. There’s the constant fear that, at any moment, there will be a knock at the door and a loved one will be taken away. I’m not sure Satrapi wanted to make this point, but you can’t watch this film without leaving the cinema with a fresh appreciation of the everyday freedoms we in the West enjoy and take for granted.

Once back in Iran, Marjane tries her best to fit in, and gets married – but love, like revolution, frequently disappoints. She gets a divorce and starts to build a new life, which begins with a dance sequence based on Eye of the Tiger. The film’s frequent use of pop-culture references gives the viewer an immediate identification with Marjane and her world – although, in showing that Iranians are just like us, Satrapi has lost what is unique about Iranians.

This is a narrative-driven account of history, and rather thin on political and cultural analysis. In one scene, an official yells at Marjane’s mother: “I bang whores likeyou and throw them in the dustbin.” You wonder if the casual misogyny displayed by so many men lies at the root of the Iranian revolution. But Satrapi offers no explanation for the success of totalitarianism in her beloved country, other than the standard critique of the CIA and the West’s hunger for oil.

The film looks unique, however. In our age of computer-driven animation, it’s refreshing to see what an artist can do with simple lines that have the eloquence and min-imalism of a woodcarving. And Satrapi uses the influences of German expressionism and Italian neo-realism to great effect, creating a powerful journey into the past.

12A, 96 mins

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