Poor Adam seems to have a mutant case of puberty. Whenever he finds himself
in a socially awkward situation, his body visibly alters, especially his “long
torso.” Unfortunately, that means his lower belly is hanging out there pretty
much throughout Joel Vaudreuil’s animated feature, When Adam Changes,
which screens today as part of this year’s Animation First.
In
1990s Quebec, Adam gets bullied a lot for his stooped shoulders, pudgy midrift,
and that darned torso (which keeps growing with each callous remark), particularly
by his “beloved” grandmother, Ange. Her death hits his mother hard, but it
leaves him confused about how he should feel and react. Adam is not a bad guy,
so his older sister really ought to have his back more. Unfortunately, she is
distracted by her toxic relationship with her unfaithful boyfriend.
Adam
obviously carries a torch for a pretty girl, who maybe recognizes he is smarter
than most of their classmates, but whenever he tries to engage with her, she
always seems to disappoint him. It also seems like he is the only teen in the entire
school who must work over the summer. Much to his chagrin, his father committed
him for two jobs. One is a house-sitting gig that isn’t bad. However, mowing
the lawn of a crazy grass-obsessed neighbor is a miserable experience.
By 1980, many (if not most) Iranians realized the Islamic Revolution was a
national catastrophe. Unfortunately, the Iran-Iraq War had the unintended
consequence of strengthening the Ayatollah’s hand, because when Iraq attacked,
patriotic Iranians like Omid’s brother rallied to their country’s defense. The
young (barely) teenager wants to serve, but instead he stays to care for his
elderly grandfather in Sepideh Farsi’s The Siren, which screens as the
closing night selection of this year’s Animation First.
Omid’s
brother Amed has volunteered to defend their strategic (and oil-rich) port city
of Abadan, like most young men his age. Their mother whisks their younger
siblings off to safer territory, reluctantly leaving Omid in charge of
crotchety grandpa. Omid hoped to join Amed on the frontlines, but he changes
his tune when blunders into a full-scale fire-fight.
Unfortunately,
the front constantly finds Abadan thanks to Saddam’s rocket attacks. Replacing Farshid,
a surrogate big brother injured by shell fragments, on his food delivery route,
Omed meets a colorful cross-section of Abadan’s remaining residents. There is
an eccentric engineer, two Armenian priests safeguarding their church’s icon,
and Elaheh, a former star vocalist, who has been living in quiet seclusion
since the Revolutionary regime banned music.
Omid
is even more interested in Elaheh’s pretty young daughter, Pari, who is also
incredibly brave. Pari helped save Farshid’s life after the shelling, by using
her headscarf as a torniquet—in what might be one of the most important scenes
in you will see in an animated film this year. Learning the Iraqis are expected
to soon overrun Abadan, Omid hatches an evacuation plan inspired by his father,
a sea captain who went down with his wooden lenj.
The
Siren is
part magical realism and partly a brutally honest and unvarnished record of
life under the Islamist regime’s Khomeini years. Screenwriter Javad Djavahery’s
narrative is loaded with historical and social significance, but it also tells
a highly relatable coming of age story. Of course, Omid faces vastly more peril
than the kid on Boyhood.
