A lesson in irritation

Persian Lessons (M, 127 mins) Directed by Vadim Perelman Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett

In English, German, French, Persian and Italian with English subtitles

In the midst of the Nazi occupation of Europe, Gilles, a young Jewish Belgian man, is being transported to a labour camp and almost certain death.

In fact, he probably won’t even make it to the camp, as the German soldiers have stopped for an unplanned mass execution in a forest beside the road.

But Gilles has one desperate roll of the dice. Producing a book of Persian stories that he received only minutes earlier in exchange for a handful of food, Gilles shouts out that he is not Jewish, but Persian.

It is enough to gain Gilles a stay of execution. But his chances of surviving the day are slim, until a guard remembers that one of their senior officers is looking for a Persian prisoner so that he may learn to speak Farsi.

And so Gilles finds himself trapped, needing to convince the fearsome Klaus Koch that he is teaching him a language that neither man knows nor understands a word of.

I walked into Persian Lessons under a half-formed impression that it is based on a true story. But it is not. And the longer the film played, the more obvious and grating the fiction that underpins Persian Lessons becomes.

The leads – Nahuel Perez Biscayart and Lars Eidinger – are exceptionally good. They sell the uneasy truce between the two men, with Koch knowing that his own survival in a few years may depend on being able to get into Iran, where he says he has a brother.

Gilles’ survival is a more immediate concern, with his relationship with Koch providing a measure of protection against the sadism of the guards and the constant threats of starvation and disease.

It’s just a pity that the script

doesn’t ever get beneath the surface of this convenient symbiosis. As long as Koch believes he is learning, then Gilles will remain alive. A few predictable twists – the arrival of a genuine Farsi speaker at the camp is the most inevitable – are dealt with swiftly and without any real effect on the simple forward motion of the narrative.

Which is too bad. It strikes me that a film about a relationship that develops between men – when one has the power of life and death over the other, but his own ignorance of his ‘‘friend’s’’ true nature is the only thing keeping him alive – had some places to go that were worth exploring.

Koch is played as exactly the sort of visionless buffoon who claims to value something he calls his ‘‘intellect’’ above all else, as though university degrees and points in an IQ test had any meaning at all without empathy, insight, courage, compassion and all that other wonderful human stuff to steer them and apply them in ways that actually work.

Gilles remains more of a cypher. In some scenes, he is the resourceful trickster, pulling the wool over the eyes of the preening Koch – and bringing back unfortunate memories of the execrable Life Is Beautiful while he does so. But in others, we sense the desperation and fear that is keeping Gilles going, even while his schemes become ever more unbelievable.

Persian Lessons is a very mixed bag. There are some potent moments – especially in the quite shameless final two scenes – and some skilful film-making from Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) and his crew.

But the invented story is an unnecessary distraction from the smaller, quieter, less flashy and more insightful drama that could have been allowed to flourish.

If you are more willing than usual to suspend your disbelief, this could be a moving and resonant film.

But if you find the story as contrived and manipulative as I did, then you’ll remember Persian Lessons as more irritating than illuminating.