We could all use something a little sunny of Middle Eastern origin right about now. This autobiographical (“ish”) dramedy by writer-director Maryam Keshavarz fills that need.

“The Persian Version” tells us the story of an LGBTQ Iranian-American daughter trying to “understand” and appreciate her not-quite-estranged mother, to heal the rift between them.

Think of the film as “The Joy Luck Club” with Iranian immigrants, as imagined by Gurinder “Bend it Like Beckham” Chadha. Yes, there’s music. And dancing.

It’s meandering and a little messy, and voice-over narrated almost to death. But the vivacious presence of newcomer Layla Mohammadi as spitfire daughter Leila and Liousha Noor as Shireen, her stern, disapproving “Strength of Silence” mother carry it with flashes of snark, spite and soul.

The first act is mostly about Leila, her life — gay, divorced, still calling her “ex” — and her beefs with her family. The second half is Leila’s mother’s life unraveled for her daughter’s and our inspection, including the “scandal” in Iran that pulled the family out of that country in the ’60s, as acted-out and narrated by younger Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet).

“I come from two cultures that used to be really in love with each other” Leila narrates — often to the camera. But Iran and American broke up. For most of her life, she’s been a “child of divorce,” “too Iranian in America, too American in Iran.”

Somehow, as the only daughter in a family of eight sons, she made her own way, got through grad school and followed her dream of “being the next Martin Scorsese,” making movies.

Her mother doesn’t approve of her sexuality, her stubbornness and her life choices. But Leila, with help from her live-in grandmother (Bella Warda, “screen presence” personified), she gets a handle on Mom’s struggle just as she learns she’s pregnant from a one-night-stand with a guy (Tom Byrne) Leila confused for a “cross-dresser”at a Halloween costume party.

He’s not gay. He’s “in ‘Hedwing and the Angry Inch” at a theater across town. And Max couldn’t help but be turned-on by Leila’s provocative “burkini” (bikini under a half-burka) costume for the night.

Messy? You don’t know the half of it. Keshavarz (“Circumstance” and “Viper Club”) takes us through Leila’s childhood, reducing her eight-man crew of brothers to “types,” dissects her parents’ marriage, embraces her mother’s real estate broker connection with immigrant buyers and skims over what Leila might do with this “relationship” that resulted in a baby when she’s pretty seriously invested in the whole lesbian thing.

Max? “He’s a thespian, not a lesbian,” because somebody needed to say it.

The narrative is a tad confusing in a “Which part of the timeline are we on now?” sense. And the structure makes “Persian Version” play like two movies grafted onto one another with the shared crutch of endless voice-over narration to make it all come together.

But there are moments of tear-jerking warmth and transgressive ebulliance.

Being women, mother and daughter could travel to Iran in the ’80s during the Iran-Iraq War without the risk of being drafted. But little Leila from the “good Muslim family” took it on herself to free the Ayatollah’s proles by smuggling “Michael Jackson, Prince and Cyndi Lauper” cassettes into the Islamic Republic.

A courtyard production number of Iranians dancing and interpreting “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is the gushy, life-affirming jolt of cuteness you didn’t know you needed right now.

Mohammadi, who’s had one-off roles on a few U.S. TV series, announces her leading lady presence with authority here, coquettishly playing to the camera and the viewer as she narrates her self-proclaimed “f–k-up,” status, eye-rolls her mother’s belief in “Shia magic realism” in moments of crisis and brushes by the menfolk in the family, save for dad’s need for a heart transplant.

The entire enterprise is a tad ungainly, rigidly structured in two halves but drifting off mother-daughter message with scenes of adorable cuteness and deflating patriarchical sexism in Islamic form. Shireen was forced to marry at 13, for instance.

Our writer-director seems to go easy on her villains here, mainly because she’s grown up enough to recognize one’s own responsibility for “living my truth” and being a happy, unselfish human being.

“The Persian Version” goes astray here and there. It pulls a few punches and leans on “cute” and near endless voice-over exposition. But it plays, and it’s the sweetest thing we’re likely to see with anything Middle Eastern about it this fall, and is worth seeing just for that.

Rating: R for language and some sexual references

Cast: Layla Mohammadi, Niousha Noor, Kamand Shafieisabet, Bijan Daneshmand, Bella Warda and Tom Byrne

Credits: Scripted and directed by Maryam Keshavarz. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:47