Circumstance – review

This disappointing film, directed by an Iranian expatriate and featuring Farsi-speaking actors, tells the exotic story of a couple of beautiful Iranian teenagers, daughters of wealthy middle-class liberals, rebelling against the joyless, rigid mullahs and their humourless, intolerant followers. Crude and predictable but nevertheless affecting, it pales beside Persepolis , Marjane Satrapi's moving, perceptive and extremely witty animated film about growing up in Iran under the shah and the ayatollahs.