Sony Pictures Classics has released the animated version of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to just seven theaters on Christmas Day, but the film has already garnered a raft of rave reviews.  It is currently rated at 98% on the Rotten Tomatoes Website with only one negative review (by Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, who objected to the film's visual style -- he wanted more 'crosshatching') out of 44 total reviews.

Much more typical was Tony Scott's review in the Tuesday New York Times where he raved: 'The pictures are arranged into the chronicle of a young girl's coming of age in difficult times, a tale that unfolds with such grace, intelligence and charm that you almost take the wondrous aspects of its execution for granted,' before concluding, 'Persepolis is frequently somber, but it is also whimsical and daring, a perfect expression of the imagination's resistance to the literal-minded and the power-mad, who insist that the world can only be seen in black and white.'

While negative reviews appear to have no effect on films like Alvin and the Chipmunks, and positive notices haven't helped the hilarious musical biopic parody Walk Hard, strong reviews appear to have more weight with the art house film audience and that is the arena in which Persepolis will live or die.  On Christmas Day Persepolis earned $5,303 per venue, the best average on the Box Office Mojo list (Alien vs. Predator Requiem was #2 with $3,713), though Persepolis is in such limited release that one shouldn't put too much weight on its average take per venue.  It should be interesting to see what kind of average Persepolis is able to maintain over its first weekend and later when Sony rolls it out to a larger number of theaters.

Retailers should pay attention to their local arthouse theaters' schedules as the film expands beyond its current limited, major-markets-only release.  Pantheon has a number of versions of Satrapi's two Persepolis volumes in print including a box set and a Complete Persepolis ($24.95) 342-page single volume edition that teases the film on its cover (that features the same basic art as the movie poster).