Unel is living in Bukowski-like squalor and despair in Germany; he tries to kill himself and runs into Kekelli at the hospital, who's also tried to kill herself, for somewhat different reasons. Kekelli convinces Unel to marry her so that she can escape her restrictive family environs: he does so, and soon finds he's falling in love with her. And then a bunch of stuff happens.
This is a movie that works fairly well moment to moment: when you step back afterwards, though, the whole thing seems rather diffuse and pointless. Ultimately director Akin doesn't seem to want to impose any kind of narrative structure on the events he's filming: what ends up happening, though, is that his characters end up buffeted about by the demands of the movie-moment, and never really become anything more than pawns in Akin's vision.
There is much to admire. Unel and Kekelli are both playing clichéd sorts of characters, The Immigrant Who Longs To Break Free and Live Life and The Drunken Bum Who's Really A Despairing Beautiful Soul, but they both throw themselves into their roles fearlessly, and manage at points to really bring them to life. The multi-cultural world is clever presented throughout, especially as a setting -- Turks drink German Beer and listen to Austrailian Goth while living like an American bum.
Unfortunately Akin wants to embody this as an actual cinematic theme, and it doesn't really work. Having Unel play Mickey Rourke play Bukowski without a hint of a smile is odd, frankly. Little things like the Turkish musical interludes or the sudden break into English sound better in words than they actually play out on the screen -- it feels like a forced metaphor.
Worst of all, this unwillingness to embody a genre, to instead go hop-skipping about among several possible "stories" is a real gross intellectual conceit. It has the perverse effect of robbing these characters of their dignity: almost anything seems to be able to happen to them, and that of course means none of it becomes very interesting. It also breaks tone, and that's always distracting to the viewer. Particularly because,despite some critics, there's nothing at all realistic about any of this. These characters embody a fantasy "edgy" world, it's a very artificial realm. I would argue that genre constraints allow for a greater realism, ultimately, in part because the auteur's hand is not so apparent.
I will check out the next movie by Akin, I think he's got real talent. But this is too self-consciously unfocused to be effective, although isolated scenes are often well done.
This is a movie that works fairly well moment to moment: when you step back afterwards, though, the whole thing seems rather diffuse and pointless. Ultimately director Akin doesn't seem to want to impose any kind of narrative structure on the events he's filming: what ends up happening, though, is that his characters end up buffeted about by the demands of the movie-moment, and never really become anything more than pawns in Akin's vision.
There is much to admire. Unel and Kekelli are both playing clichéd sorts of characters, The Immigrant Who Longs To Break Free and Live Life and The Drunken Bum Who's Really A Despairing Beautiful Soul, but they both throw themselves into their roles fearlessly, and manage at points to really bring them to life. The multi-cultural world is clever presented throughout, especially as a setting -- Turks drink German Beer and listen to Austrailian Goth while living like an American bum.
Unfortunately Akin wants to embody this as an actual cinematic theme, and it doesn't really work. Having Unel play Mickey Rourke play Bukowski without a hint of a smile is odd, frankly. Little things like the Turkish musical interludes or the sudden break into English sound better in words than they actually play out on the screen -- it feels like a forced metaphor.
Worst of all, this unwillingness to embody a genre, to instead go hop-skipping about among several possible "stories" is a real gross intellectual conceit. It has the perverse effect of robbing these characters of their dignity: almost anything seems to be able to happen to them, and that of course means none of it becomes very interesting. It also breaks tone, and that's always distracting to the viewer. Particularly because,despite some critics, there's nothing at all realistic about any of this. These characters embody a fantasy "edgy" world, it's a very artificial realm. I would argue that genre constraints allow for a greater realism, ultimately, in part because the auteur's hand is not so apparent.
I will check out the next movie by Akin, I think he's got real talent. But this is too self-consciously unfocused to be effective, although isolated scenes are often well done.