As other reviewers have said this is a very "Turkish" movie, and as such I might have enjoyed it more than some people, having spent two years of my life living in Turkey. But really there is no such thing as a "Turkish" movie--Turkish movies are just as widely varied as American movies are (this is absolutely nothing like the infamous Turkish version of "The Exorcist", for instance). This is definitely a Turkish-flavored film in some ways, but it is also really one of those (mostly foreign) movies that really uses film as a visual medium as opposed to a purely dramatic one. It's not just that there's no Hollywood-style car chases or big explosions, or that the the one act of violence takes place entirely offscreen. But there's also not a lot of dramatic dialogue (or dialogue period). There's not the "big", self-important acting performances, or even the usual over-bearing, emotion-jerking musical score (which is the one thing I probably find most annoying about Hollywood movies).
This is a subtle drama about a three-person family (four, actually, if you count a son who died in under mysterious, unspoken circumstances and appears occasionally in ghostly visions). The father goes to jail after taking a fall in a hit-and-run accident for his wealthy, politician employer. The post-adolescent son drifts into juvenile delinquency, and the depressed and middle-age but still quite attractive mother has to approach the employer to borrow money for a car so her directionless son can pursue a career. Infidelity, jealousy, and revenge eventually ensue, and the plot comes full circle with another even more downtrodden person taking the fall for another crime.
There are a lot of long, washed-out shots of actors brooding on rooftops overlooking the sea while a thunderstorm approaches. The Midwestern American pseudo-sophisticated rubes at the film festival where I saw this were bitching afterwards about how "slow" it was, but personally I thought it was very beautiful (go see a Steven Spielberg flick if want roller-coaster suspense or tear-jerking schmaltz). The acting was excellent, even if it's the kind of introverted acting most "name" Hollywood stars today hate and couldn't pull off if their lives depended on it. This would make a poor Hollywood blockbuster, a lousy Broadway play, and a quickly-cancelled primetime TV show, but it's a very beautiful movie.
This is a subtle drama about a three-person family (four, actually, if you count a son who died in under mysterious, unspoken circumstances and appears occasionally in ghostly visions). The father goes to jail after taking a fall in a hit-and-run accident for his wealthy, politician employer. The post-adolescent son drifts into juvenile delinquency, and the depressed and middle-age but still quite attractive mother has to approach the employer to borrow money for a car so her directionless son can pursue a career. Infidelity, jealousy, and revenge eventually ensue, and the plot comes full circle with another even more downtrodden person taking the fall for another crime.
There are a lot of long, washed-out shots of actors brooding on rooftops overlooking the sea while a thunderstorm approaches. The Midwestern American pseudo-sophisticated rubes at the film festival where I saw this were bitching afterwards about how "slow" it was, but personally I thought it was very beautiful (go see a Steven Spielberg flick if want roller-coaster suspense or tear-jerking schmaltz). The acting was excellent, even if it's the kind of introverted acting most "name" Hollywood stars today hate and couldn't pull off if their lives depended on it. This would make a poor Hollywood blockbuster, a lousy Broadway play, and a quickly-cancelled primetime TV show, but it's a very beautiful movie.