{"id":535434,"date":"2026-07-10T23:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T23:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/535434\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T23:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T23:06:10","slug":"reading-lolita-in-tehran-movie-review-azar-nafisi-memoir-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/535434\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ Movie Review: Azar Nafisi Memoir Adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fleeting impulse to label a film<\/a> about women\u2019s oppression in 20th-century Iran as a \u201cfeel-good movie\u201d is enough to make you wonder if you\u2019ve been irreversibly poisoned by the Eden\u2019s apple of excessive media analysis. But even without being so reductive, there are more than a few moments within \u201cReading Lolita in Tehran<\/a>\u201d that feel like you\u2019re watching an after-school special about the magic of reading.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s likely by design, but it robs the film of some nuance that would have made it more compelling. For all of its elegant musings about the power of literature and deeply emotive performances by an ensemble of actresses who clearly believe in the mission, Eran Riklis\u2019 adaptation of Azar Nafisi\u2019s bestselling memoir of the same name never manages to leave platitudes behind long enough to truly emulate the classic writing that inspired it. Instead, we\u2019re left with a film about the universality of great novels that can\u2019t quite figure out how to make a book about reading feel cinematic. <\/p>\n

\"'Wall-E'<\/a> \"'The<\/a> <\/p>\n

The real Nafisi is a beloved literary figure, a professor who has devoted the bulk of her life to evangelizing about the transcendence of Western literature in places where its liberal, humanist messages are much needed. Raised in Iran but educated in Europe and America, she briefly taught at the University of Tehran in the late 1970s before being forced out of academia for refusing to comply with the country\u2019s strict theocratic rules. But even as she began spending more of her time in the West, she never lost sight of the women in her home country and their need for literary education. <\/p>\n

Riklis\u2019 film splits its attention between two timelines, following Nafisi (played by Golshifteh Farahani) as both a young professor enduring harassment from male colleagues and students who declare \u201cThe Great Gatsby\u201d to be profoundly immoral, and as a mid-1990s academic exile who invites female students to discuss banned books in her apartment. This group provides the title of both Nafisi\u2019s memoir and the film, as she encourages her students to use transgressive literature to understand their own place in the world.<\/p>\n

They come to understand that \u201cLolita\u201d has less to do with pedophilia than Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s exploration of a man\u2019s ability to rationalize his darkest desires<\/a>. Some women begin to see themselves in the eponymous sexualized child, relating to the way that men in their lives see them as a blank canvas rather than a fully formed human being. Ditto for Jane Austen, whose \u201cPride and Prejudice\u201d illustrates how every society has had its own convoluted courtship rituals and built women\u2019s roles around them.<\/p>\n

The film uses a simple visual language to convey the sense of freedom these women find in reading: The book club scenes are brightly lit and filled with color, whereas the rest of Nafisi\u2019s life in Tehran is shot in muddy, grayish hues. And Farahani gives an excellent performance as Nafisi, using her eyes to convey the constant pain of a woman whose mind has so much more to offer a society that\u2019s always telling her to do less. It\u2019s all in service of the film\u2019s central point that reading can be a window to the outside world no matter how dark your life might seem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all correct, of course. This critic certainly believes that there\u2019s a universal brilliance to Austen\u2019s social satire<\/a>, Nabokov\u2019s slippery use of perspective, and F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s piercing understanding of the American soul. And if you\u2019re reading this and sincerely considering an outing to see a film called \u201cReading Lolita in Tehran,\u201d it\u2019s a safe bet you do, too. That\u2019s the meta problem that a film like this has to reckon with: When your audience has likely already bought into your core message before they make it out of the concession line, you have to eventually offer them something richer. For all of its noble intentions, \u201cReading Lolita in Tehran\u201d never quite gets there. All the references to the world\u2019s greatest literature, with their endless layers of narrative depth, ultimately feel like a reminder of how little is on display here by comparison.<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cReading Lolita in Tehran\u201d should please fans of Nafisi\u2019s book \u2014 and there are worse ways to spend less than two hours if you\u2019re a bibliophile who needs a reminder about the enduring power of literature. It\u2019s hard to disagree with any of the film\u2019s lovely messages; it\u2019s just equally hard to recommend it to anyone who wasn\u2019t already a diehard fan of the material. <\/p>\n

Grade: C+<\/p>\n

A Greenwich Entertainment release, \u201cReading Lolita in Tehran\u201d is now playing in select theaters.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fleeting impulse to label a film about women\u2019s oppression in 20th-century Iran as a \u201cfeel-good movie\u201d is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,878,85,46,397,244102,1530],"class_list":["post-535434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-reading-lolita-in-tehran","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}