My wife recommended that we go to the Spectrum 8 Theatre and watch the movie Reading Lolita in Tehran. I’m almost always interested in seeing movies unfamiliar to me, so we attended on a Thursday afternoon; alas, only one other person was present.
I will admit that I was unfamiliar with the non-fiction book by Iranian author and academic Azar Nafisi, published in 2003. It is based on her own experiences while teaching English literature at the University of Tehran during the Iranian Revolution.”
The film seems to hew closely to the book, but it does not necessarily follow its chronology. After the fall of the Shah of Iran, Azar (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband Bijan (Arash Marandi) return to their homeland, expecting more freedom.
Unfortunately, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini meant a different change. She gets pushback, initially from a young man in her class, who thinks there was nothing redeeming about The Great Gatsby because of the moral turpitude of the main couple – adultery! The country increasingly becomes more restrictive.
“Gatsby” for 1979 was the first piece, followed by “Lolita” (1995), Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” (1988), and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1996).
The professor ultimately gets fired from her position. Society requires the hijab. Her ultimate response was to teach these classes – for women only for a variety of reasons. It’s in those discussions, shown in much brighter hues than much of the rest of the film, that allow great insights about liberation.
My favorite involved Pride and Prejudice, where the professor explains how conveying dialogue and even flirtation in the midst of regimented dance.
Pretty good
This was a good, not great movie. One is already in the movie’s corner going in. The episodic nature of the film didn’t always gel. It was still worthwhile, because, as Peter Travers noted in his 2.5 stars-out-of-4 review, “Today, the book banning strikes a raw nerve in America, the country the women once regarded as a haven for freedom seekers.”
(A recent example: South Florida State College fired an English professor after she assigned a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students. Now the professor is suing. “The instructor, Vinita Prabhakar, said in an interview that she had taught the story in her classes for nearly a decade without incident.”)
Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie an 86% positive rating, but not enough audience patrons viewed the film to comment.
The film was made in Italy, and some narratives were fictionalized to protect some of the real people portrayed. It was released originally in 2024, but didn’t make it to the US until July 2026.
