Yusef receives a phone call in his tiny used bookstore in Istanbul informing
him that his mother has died and that he must return to the small town where
he grew up for the funeral. The film is covered by a sheen of melancholy,
memory and silence in which very little occurs, very little is explained
and the dialogue is as sparse as people in some of the barren landscapes.
We are witnesses and yet never taken into the confidence of the characters
and so have to grasp at the small nuances, the expressions, the stares and
the body language to understand that everything emotional here is happening
beneath the surface.
Once at his mother’s house Yusef meets his young distant cousin Alya who
has been his mother’s companion and housekeeper for the past few years and
she explains to him that his mother’s wish was to have a goat sacrificed.
He only wants to get back to Istanbul but something almost mystical keeps
him from leaving. Clearly there is a complex uneasy back story between him
and his dead mother and perhaps a future romantic story between him and
Alya but it is left primarily to the audience to guess at. This is a marvelously
moody introspective tone poem with near pitch perfect performances from
Saadet Isil Aksoy as the hopeful Alya and Nejat Isler as the taciturn Yusef.
Its reflective mood slowly and almost unnoticeably seeps into your unconsciousness
and stays there long after the film ends. This is the first of three films
in what the director terms the Trilogy of Yusef but in an intriguing decision
the director filmed the final part of it first – so one assumes that much
of what was left unexplained in this film is revealed as we backtrack in
the next two. The director won the Best Director prize at the festival.
