Chiara Mastroianni brings a welcome naturalness to the screen. Her voice in Persepolis is our clearest reason to rate her: she makes the person telling the story matter, without sounding as though she is delivering a lesson.
Fi1m perspective
In Persepolis (2007), Chiara Mastroianni’s older Marjane has a personality that keeps the narration from sounding recited. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s film asks its central voice to keep growing up interesting amid a great deal of history. Mastroianni does that without making the account sound dutiful. We hear someone whose own experiences matter, and that is essential to a film which is funny and painful about becoming an adult.
Her early work includes André Téchiné’s My Favourite Season (1993) and a supporting part in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994). The sustained collaboration with Christophe Honoré, beginning with Love Songs (2007), offers a clearer route through her work than a list of distinguished directors. The lead in On a Magical Night (2019) suits her ease with complicated, free-spirited women. That part draws on the same natural screen presence that makes her voice work so persuasive: she can make a thoughtful character engaging without insisting on our admiration.
The company around her matters in Persepolis, which remains our strongest recommendation. Gabrielle Lopes Benites voices the young Marjane, while Catherine Deneuve and Simon Abkarian give her parents worries of their own. Danielle Darrieux’s grandmother is affectionate without sounding appointed to supply wisdom. We were moved by the warmth in Darrieux’s voice, because it makes the family’s closeness feel worth caring about. Mastroianni’s older voice belongs among these people; her personality helps hold our attention without making the other performances seem incidental.
The reservation is about the film’s pace: some episodes pass before we have had enough time with them. Mastroianni helps keep that briskness from making the account impersonal, but an engaging voice cannot give a scene more time. What she supplies is a reason to care about the person at the centre, which is easy to overlook when discussing animation. Start with Persepolis, and give the voices as much attention as the drawings.
Biography
Chiara Mastroianni is a French-Italian actress and singer. She was born on 28 May 1972 in Paris, France, the daughter of actors Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.
Mastroianni began her screen career in the early 1990s. Her first major role came in André Téchiné’s My Favorite Season (1993), for which she received a César Award nomination. She appeared in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994) and has since worked in numerous French and international productions.
She is known for voice work as Marjane in the animated film Persepolis (2007), as well as roles in Love Songs (2007), A Christmas Tale (2008), The Beautiful Person (2008), Chicken with Plums (2011), On a Magical Night (2019), The Girl with a Bracelet (2020) and Other People's Children (2022). She has frequently collaborated on screen with her mother.
