Vincent Paronnaud’s dark comic instincts find a productive partner in Marjane Satrapi. We recommend their Persepolis warmly: its expressive drawings and tolerance for a young heroine’s foolishness matter more than the occasional rush through her story.
Fi1m perspective
A face drawn in a few strokes can still look foolish, and Persepolis (2007) allows its young heroine that small indignity. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud let her be contradictory without requiring us to admire every mistake. We laughed at Marjane’s awkwardness because the directors do not insist on giving her a lesson after every embarrassment. The warmth comes from the family and from the freedom she is given to get things wrong. It is a film we recommend readily, with a reservation about its hurried episodes.
Under the name Winshluss, Paronnaud developed an underground comics practice marked by macabre humour from the late 1990s. Those comics favour the grotesque and the cruel, which makes the humanity of his work with Satrapi worth noticing. Their partnership involves both writing and directing, with Paronnaud placing particular emphasis on framing and rhythm. In Persepolis, the expressive faces make that attention to drawing count for more than visual decoration. His technical contribution deserves attention even when the story being told belongs to his co-director.
The compression is less satisfying. Satrapi and Paronnaud adapt her graphic memoirs with a clear understanding of how drawings can keep us close to a character, but some episodes are over before they have had enough time. The family’s warmth carries us through those abrupt passages, though it cannot quite make them feel complete. The film is persuasive enough about these people that spending longer with them would hardly have been a burden.
The partnership continued with Chicken with Plums (2011), adapting another Satrapi graphic novel through live action with animation elements. Paronnaud’s solo Hunted (2020) draws on his comics background for a story concerned with fear and revenge. The harsher material need not be taken as evidence that he is more himself when working alone. His contribution to Persepolis is substantial enough without separating it from Satrapi’s. Start there for the humour and the family, with patience for an episode that ends too soon.
Biography
Vincent Paronnaud is a French director and comic book artist, also known by the pseudonym Winshluss. Born in 1970 in La Rochelle, he began in underground comics, publishing in fanzines from 1995 and co-editing the magazine Ferraille with Cizo.
He co-directed and co-wrote the animated feature Persepolis (2007) with Marjane Satrapi, adapting her graphic novel. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes and two César Awards. Paronnaud and Satrapi later collaborated on Chicken with Plums (2011). He has directed other works including Hunted (2021) and shorts under his pseudonym.
