"Embroideries"

No suspense or deep revelation of the human condition are presented to us in Marjane Satrapi's "Embroideries". Just an afternoon of frank conversation between a group of "experienced" Iranian women over after-lunch tea in post-revolution Iran. Unlike her better known "Persepolis" and "Persepolis 2", in "Embroideries" there is no plot to pull the reader along as Satrapi instead holds the readers attention through interesting and humorous dialogue between the group of women who make up her mother's and grandmother's cohort. Imagine if the producers of the hit television show "Desperate Housewives" commissioned Satrapi to write an episode for it's international pilot. That's "Embroideries".

In this work Marjane Satrapi essentially swaps the wide-angle lens of "Persepolis" for a zoom lens, focusing on a particular aspect of her life in Tehran, detailing the racy conversations the women partook in after the men went to there post-meal naps, and rest assured"Desperate Housewives" has nothing on these women in terms of language or subject-matter. Comparing the tenor, subject-matter, and sometimes the ruthlessness of the conversation of these women to the gossip sessions and kaffee klatchen of western women one can only conclude that the lives of women in Iran bare more similarities than differences to their counterparts in the West. Perhaps there is one revelation of the human condition presented after all; women everywhere need to carve out a space of their own to fully express themselves and be understood.