MovieChat Forums > Darbareye Elly (2009) Discussion > Sepideh: the most hated character

Sepideh: the most hated character

posted 11 years ago by infy-abhishek
25 replies | jump to latest

Sepideh was really one of the most irritating, weird and impulsive female character I have come across. How she manipulates, lies and tries to keep the things under her control.

Since the start, when we come to know that she hid the fact from everyone about no confirmed accommodation. Then doing kiddish things like hiding cell phone and bag and not admitting when caught red handed. It really made me hate her the way she stopped Elly from leaving. Moreover, she was not truthful to anyone. She din't disclose Elly's position even with Ahmed and her husband.

Simply to win over accolades, how a person can jeopardize everyone's life. Even in the end, she shamelessly asked everyone to stand for her whereas she herself could not show the courage to speak the truth to save Elly's honor.

For some reason, I have never felt so disturbed by any movie character so much.

[–] mikeyflatley 10 years ago

She wuz purdy but toward da end, I can't stand her face bec of wat she did

[–] fluffy-1 10 years ago

Learn to talk like a regular person. This is awful.

[–] mikeyflatley 10 years ago

Excuse me 4 livin

[–] sharpnova 9 years ago

No. Your comment wasn't funny at all. It was just stupid and annoying to read.

Learn to speak properly or get the *beep* off my network.

[–] mikeyflatley 9 years ago

Oh yeh?

[–] jbaer-5 10 years ago

Spoiler - that was the whole point of the film. Deception and lies eventually catch up to a person.

[–] jriley555 10 years ago

if you consider for a moment that she is operating in a ruthlessly repressive and patriarchal culture to give her friend a chance to escape a loveless union, and bring a chance at love to her brother (who as also in on the secret), maybe it becomes easier to understand and accept her actions, which required courage and risk and love.

throughout the film, she is reeling from the adversity her actions brought about, and attempting to mitigate the harm to herself, elly, and her family, which makes her only decent and human.

her purpose was to do good for a womanfriend in a complex, unfair, arbitrary world, not evil. this woman, through no one's fault, came to a bad end, which exposed a complex adventure to a censorious society & its censure. why despise good? something to reflect upon...

[–] Anaheim92807 10 years ago

A society that represses its women forces them to lead lives of deception.

[–] infy-abhishek 10 years ago

That would be a gross generalization in my opinion.

[–] mamlukman 9 years ago

Did you like the part where Amir beats Sepideh up? Very civilized.

[–] infy-abhishek 9 years ago

Absolutely not. But that is no justification for what all she did. Or are you justifying it?

[–] mamlukman 9 years ago

You don't physically hit or intimidate women. Period. No excuses.

[–] infy-abhishek 9 years ago

Can't agree more. But this is not related to my original post.

[–] mamlukman 9 years ago

OK. I'll agree that Sepideh lied, etc., but every single other character does too. Even the children are taught to lie! The mother of Elly lies. The fiancé lies. Elly lies. They all lie! About every little thing! I honestly don't understand the point of this--is Farhadi saying that to get along in Iran today you have to lie constantly? Or is he just saying that people in general lie to manipulate other people? Or is he presenting a moral fable, that Sepideh's lies indirectly led to the death of Elly? I have no idea. But it made me not like the movie or the characters in the movie--in that sense, I agree with you. None of the characters is admirable.

In my review I talked about the press conference that was on the DVD--more lying! Farhadi was evasive and refused to answer questions. He acted like a politician. He was asked three separate times about "the problem" the movie had with officials in Iran. No one explained what "the problem" was. The most Farhadi would say is that "some newspapers" criticized the movie.

As an aside, do you realize the actress who play Sepideh, Golshifteh Farahani, moved to Paris in 2012? She's going to be in the next Pirates of the Caribbean.

I'll add that my daughter-in-law is Iranian. She fled Iran after the student protests in the late 1990s. At this point none of her family or friends live in Iran. They're all in Europe or N. America.

[–] Milo-Jeeder 10 years ago

It's easy to judge Sepideh, but I can understand why she lied to everyone, even though I don't justify her in any way. I think she felt bad for Elly, because they were friends and she realized that Elly wasn't in love with her fiancé. Elly seemed like a very subservient girl and she wasn't able to face her family or Alireza (her fiancé), because they expected her to marry him and she felt a lot of pressure from them. In the end, Sepideh steps in and introduces her to a new guy, in hopes that Elly will get some strenght to break the engagement.

While I do agree that Sepideh's plan was clumsy and she shouldn't have lied to everyone the way she did, I think she was only trying to help her friend. Like others pointed out, one would think that Iranian culture is very different from western culture in many ways, and I got the impression that sometimes, women are pressured into marrying men they don't love.

I really felt quite distressed at not receiving an invitation - Maleficent

[–] fairy_depp 10 years ago

I agree with the original post, she was quite manipulative and should just have let Elly go when she wanted to but this doesn't make her the worst character I've ever seen on film.. People do these kind of things all the time but it was awful luck for it to have gone this far - all of the characters told lies because they were too scared to tell the truth and we saw that this just led to more heartbreak. I don't believe that the fact the film was set in Iran has any bearing on her actions... Plenty of women (and men) the world over have been too scared to break off unhappy relationships and she said her family weren't all that keen on him either so probably would have supported her decision.. I also don't buy that Sepideh was 'helping out her friend' because she hadn't even shown enough interest in her friend to find out her full name!

[–] parknourie 9 years ago

She was a bit controlling but I think it was because no-one else was up there to take charge of it.
The way she jumped right into the sea shows to me that she really cared about everything around her.

Sure she hid facts and fair enough that you thought she was irritating for that.

I thought she was the driving key to the plot and was the most interesting character in a film where all the characters had depth and dimension.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down and a Wagging Finger of Shame

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] infy-abhishek 9 years ago

If the same thing was done by a man, it would be easily termed as manipulative, male dominance blah blah. But here you are terming it as heroism.

It is not gender issue at all here. I was just trying to point out the methods she adopted.

[–] timlin-4 9 years ago

Well she would still be alive. Women who can't obey simple traditions are mentally unfit

[–] sumibumi528 9 years ago

I thought Sepideh's husband was the most hated character. He is grumpy from the start and he blames his wife for Elly's death, not to mention beating her for it. He was just an *beep* to her throughout the movie. The other couples seemed happier and better 'fits' for each other than the two of them.

I think Sepideh genuinely cared about her friend and like the other responses, I think she wanted to get her out of a bad relationship. She wanted her to be happy and she wanted Ahmad to find a nice wife, which I thought was sweet. Yes, she shouldn't have kept Elly from leaving when she needed to. I thought that was childish, but I see that a lot in our culture (women sometimes acting like children because they were sheltered most of their lives) so I didn't think it was necessarily a character flaw. Towards the end, Sepideh is the only one who stands up for her friend and shows genuine love and caring to want to protect her after death.