★½
“Puts the turkey in Turkish cinema”
The palpable sense of disappointment I felt when the end credits rolled, was all the more striking, given the decent way this opened. Ayse (Koç) is enjoying a shower after some afternoon delight with her lover, when there’s a thunderous knocking on the door. It’s her thoroughly disgruntled ex-husband. In the resulting fracas, the boyfriend is shot dead, and Ayse has to leap out of a window, and go on the run. Friends and family disown her, as the ancient concept of the honour killing still holds sway in contemporary Turkey. She can’t even go to the authorities, since the ex-husband is a policeman.
Ayse attempts to head to the big city of Istanbul, more secular and offering a chance to hide out. This plan is derailed when a routine traffic stop leads to her capture. She manages to steal a police car, thanks to the cops underestimating her – you’ll find that is a bit of a theme. However, it crashes in fog and she’s forced on the run again, this time into the wilderness of the forest. She is pursued there by her former husband and various relatives, including a teenage cousin. They feel, to varying degrees that her actions have brought shame upon their family, and that she must pay for that, with her blood. Ayse, has other plans, especially after she wrests a weapon from one of the hunters.
It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen quite often before: a woman being chased through the wilderness, before turning the tables on them. When done properly, it can be highly effective. Examples of the proper execution – pun intended – would include Revenge or Arisaka. This, on the other hand, manages to get just about everything wrong. Part of it may be down to an overseas audience not being aware of the honour concepts, something the makers here don’t bother to explain. That’s forgivable. After all, it wasn’t made for us. But there are any number of other flaws, such as the ease with which she can best everyone in hand-to-hand combat. Or the lengthy, almost entirely pointless scene where Ayse tries to bribe a bus-driver to take her to Istanbul.
These pale entirely beside the ending, which is solely responsible for losing the film an entire star. For, in general, it looks decent, with some impressive cinematography, such as the drone shot that follows Ayse as she’s fleeing the apartment, and pans up to reveal the city. Despite its flaws, we were probably looking at ★★½. And then, we weren’t. I do not know what the director was trying to say with the ending. If I had to guess, something like “I have no idea how to wrap things up, and frankly, am getting bored with the entire endeavour, so I’m just going to roll the credits.” Almost makes me want to recommend watching this, purely for how bad the finish is. There’s certainly not much else to justify the experience.
Dir: Emre Akay
Star: Billur Melis Koç, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Yagiz Can Konyali, Adam Bay