Persepolis may be a landmark: the first ever feature-length animated autobiography. Based on graphic novels by Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi, this Franco-American production (which Satrapi co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud) is international in scope, often enjoyable and perhaps even “truthful,” but limited in a way that is so fundamental that I could not assent to the “magic” that other reviewers have found in watching it.

The story spans something like fifteen years, beginning in 1978 when Satrapi would have been eight or nine. The autobiographer is voiced by Gabrielle Lopes as a child and, when older, by Chiara Mastroianni—daughter of Marcello and Catherine Deneuve, who also plays her mother in the movie. She’s the precocious scion of a left-leaning, bourgeois family in Tehran at a time of turmoil. When the dictatorial shah is overthrown, a nascent Westernized democracy is anticipated; instead, Iran drifts into a situation reminiscent of those famous lyrics by The Who: “Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss.”

Satrapi, an independent-minded teenager in a repressive, sexist culture, feels squashed and leaves the country for a Francophone lycée in Vienna. She falls in with a crowd of nihilist, anarchist hipsters; but they are only interested in Satrapi’s exoticism, and their intellectualism is depicted as baseless because they’ve never suffered.

Satrapi has and continues to. She ends up a vagrant with tuberculosis and decides to return home where religious oppression is back in swing and everyone acts as vapidly as the Europeans. She gets hitched to a man she loves (because it is the only acceptable way for them to publicly show affection to one another under the new regime), but only one scene later, her new hubby is watching Terminator on television and their relationship has fallen apart. Eventually, she returns to Europe—this time France—but, perhaps since this is a French film (and France Satrapi’s adopted home), that nation is spared criticism; her time there merely serves the movie as a teaser and a coda (both confined to the airport, no less).

Persepolis is, essentially, an outsider story; like so many artistic types—so many “misunderstood kids”—Satrapi can’t seem to fit in anywhere. But due to the nature of her eventful life, her tale balloons into an international put-down. Not only are her friends flimsy, but all the Viennese: her lovers, the nuns, and even the batty professor who takes her in. This film takes on the duplicitous philosophy that we as Westerners take for granted our enlightened mores and civil liberties, and yet are shallow and unable to relate to those who have suffered violent social and political upheaval. Our pat on the back turns into a jab at the eye.

Because of this, well-meaning Westerners may see the movie and feel a misguided sense of inferiority. One gets the feeling that Satrapi’s strife is what has made her unable to relate to those around her; she can’t befriend anybody because she’s on a higher plane. She tries to blend in, but her inability to do so is treated like a foregone conclusion. Despite her charming wit, she seems to still carry a Debbie Downer outlook like a ball and chain; her life’s been hard, yes, but of course it’ll be difficult for her to make genuine friends if she keeps using that as a wedge between her and everyone else.

I definitely had sympathy for Satrapi—for the political tumult she faced and the seeming constancy of her loneliness—but I also grew tired of her alienation. (Yes, I realize that this is based on a real life, but real life isn’t always cinematic.) Her teen angst is cleverly handled, but, at its roots, is still the same teen angst that has become risibly predictable in American movies. I doubt that Satrapi, at least consciously, is anywhere near as snobbish as I might make her seem, and there is good indication that some of her teenage disaffection is meant to be taken ironically. But the fact that not a single European (or Iranian upon her return) stuck out to her as worthy of being a full-developed character in her autobiography is suspect. Holden Caulfield’s alienation was somewhat ineffable, but he was still a teenager when he narrated his story. Satrapi’s teen angst was both cultural-political (which could have ugly, didactic implications) and ineffable (a literary and cinematic theme that has been running low on gas since The Graduate), but now she’s 39. Couldn’t she have fleshed some characters from her past out beyond caricature in retrospect?

Topicality, like liberal guilt and ineffable alienation, tends to drum up critical support, and in the eyes of film critics, it’s a good time to be Iranian. Americans’ current view of Iran is muddled at best—it appears to be backward in terms of sexism and anti-Semitism, and religious fundamentalism is never cool, but it also seems to be Westernizing and unworthy of the armed conflict of which the Bush Administration is so fond of insinuating. An open-minded person wants to identify with Iranian characters, wants to prove their well-founded inkling that “they’re human, too.” Unfortunately, Persepolis puts such a narrow lens on Satrapi and her social isolation that, outside of her and her immediate family, characterization is blotted out. We get the family and the relatives (whose politics align with those of many in the audience), but by singling them out in a whole big world of empties, one feels their identification with the interesting characters marred by a sense of detachment.

Persepolis does, however, have things in it worth recommending. The fact that it’s a cartoon is one asset; that downplays some of its astringency without severing connection at the primal level. The French seem to be the avant-garde in terms of animation these days, considering the stylistic freshness of this and The Triplets of Belleville, though that movie is now (gasp!) five years old. The black-and-white style here has both the boldness of Soviet Constructivist propaganda and the elegant succinctness of daily comic strips. Further, the animation has an interesting effect which may or may not have been intentional: it seems to blur the ethnicity of the characters.

The cartooniness also lends a lot to the film’s often-wonderful sense of humor. The scenes with Satrapi’s uninhibited grandmother (Danielle Darrieux) always have some charm, and Satrapi has a lot of self-effacing moments that really take advantage of the format—her bout with puberty is one and the before-and-after depiction of one of her boyfriends is another. It’s hard to believe that someone with the wit and humility that she displays throughout the film has such trouble fitting in.