In the outlandish Holocaust drama “Persian Lessons,” the director Vadim Perelman (“House of Sand and Fog”) performs a wobbly balancing act of horror, humor, romance and self-glorifying sentimentality against a grim backdrop of forced labor and human squalor.
At the beginning of the film, Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a Jewish Frenchman captured by the Nazis, trades his sandwich with a fellow prisoner for an antique tome written in Persian. Condemned to death by firing squad, Gilles manages to dodge the bullets, pleading mercy as he desperately waves the book in his captors’ faces. “I’m Persian!” he screams.
Miraculously, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), a commandant, needs just that — a Persian. The Nazi dreams of opening a restaurant in Tehran after the war, and recruits Gilles — who pretends to be Reza — to teach him the language. Gilles improvises; not knowing a lick of Persian, he invents words, eventually using the names of prisoners kept in a logbook as mnemonic devices to develop his fictional tongue. It’s a wild conceit, and one can’t help but laugh, albeit nervously, as Koch takes in the mumbo-jumbo with studious severity.
Eidinger, an expert prima donna, brings out the tragic absurdity of men who blindly follow orders. His performance anchors the film’s otherwise clumsy tonal shifts.
High tensions are built into Ilya Zofin’s script as Gilles struggles to keep up the act — a fumbled word could mean his head, and a brown-nosing section leader, Max (Jonas Nay), has his eyes peeled. Pointless, lackluster detours into petty sexual dramas between the Nazis are sprinkled throughout, and, more effectively, suspicions of an erotic liaison between Gilles and Koch tease out their bond’s derangement.
Less kooky and gratingly precious than “Jojo Rabbit” or “Life Is Beautiful,” the film nevertheless also taps history with a movie-magic wand. When Perelman’s saccharine sensibilities take over, the film, as if by obligation, becomes a story about the power of human resilience and compassion — or some similar platitude.
Persian Lessons
Not rated. In German, French, Italian, English and Persian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters.
