Elveda Katya (Farewell Katya) tells the story of Katya, a Georgian girl who has been brought up in an orphanage in Batumi in Georgia. Katya (Anna Andrusenko) learns that her father is a sea captain from the Turkish port of Trabzon. Katya travels there to find out what it's like to have a father. His father who used to be a captain is now called Hadji Yusuf (Kadir İnanır) and he turns out to be a devout member of a deeply conservative society. Katya knows a smattering of Turkish and the old captain Yunus doesn't really know that his fling with a Georgian woman he met in one of the sea ports, actually bore fruit.
The story does actually sound like very much like the Yeşilçam era of the Turkish cinema which always tried to over simply complex social issues by sheer melodrama. Right from the start, we meet our orphan about whose past we briefly learn through a musical score. When the orphan travels to Trabzon, we meet his father right away. She sees him, she accosts him but she doesn't really talk to him. When you do think that you will watch a pure melodrama in which characters do not have rally any interior, psychological depth you meet the father who looks melancholic, desolate, dejected and downhearted. His sombre pensiveness make such a stark contrast to the overall nature of this movie that you just ask yourself as a viewer: 'What's this movie trying to be?" Here you see Kadir İnanır, the accomplished veteran actor of the Turkish cinema who acts as if he was in a minimalist movie which is trying to be an artful, compelling but artistically obscure. I assume nobody told him he was just in a regular romantic flick which wanted attract a mainstream audience.
In the Turkish seaport of Trabzon, local Turkish people assume Katya is another Natasha (the word is used to depict Eastern European prostitutes in Turkey). Anna Andrusenko's performance as Katya brought her the best actress award at 49th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. Her debut acting may look top-notch but she's hardly the long-legged, buxom vamp of the street. To mistake the first blonde girl on the street for a hooker is just nonsensical. You can't criticize societal norms of labelling people easily by creating new preposterous stereotypes.
The story, which is claimed to be based on a true story, is not compelling either. Either they took enough liberties or there are enough discrepancies to make it all sound not so compelling in a really predictable story. We see the main character Katya stranded in Trabzon. In spite of the fact she is rejected by her father over and over again, she doesn't give up on seeking after his father but in the end we find her delivering a trite speech on fatherhood and actually rejecting his fatherhood. I guess the only that makes this movie any different from the clichéd old Turkish movies is that it does not really create a hero out of a repentant father. In spite of all the sentimentality, I don't suppose the audience finds himself/ herself sympathized with the father. If, in his directorial debut, Ahmet Sönmez tried to make an anti-hero out of a father, I am afraid this is not the right genre because his movie looks like collage made from schmaltz, pretentious prime-time TV shows, the papier-mâché façade of art! Those who loved Özcan Alper's "Autumn" will be bitterly disappointed indeed! P.S Veteran actors are known for tackling a vide variety of acccents. Captain Yunus (KADIR INANIR) is actually good at imitating the local dialect at some points. His son and his wife reflect the local dialect of the Black Sea region too but their kids and people around them speak pure Istanbul Turkish, which left me with mixed feelings about the overall acting in this movie.
The story does actually sound like very much like the Yeşilçam era of the Turkish cinema which always tried to over simply complex social issues by sheer melodrama. Right from the start, we meet our orphan about whose past we briefly learn through a musical score. When the orphan travels to Trabzon, we meet his father right away. She sees him, she accosts him but she doesn't really talk to him. When you do think that you will watch a pure melodrama in which characters do not have rally any interior, psychological depth you meet the father who looks melancholic, desolate, dejected and downhearted. His sombre pensiveness make such a stark contrast to the overall nature of this movie that you just ask yourself as a viewer: 'What's this movie trying to be?" Here you see Kadir İnanır, the accomplished veteran actor of the Turkish cinema who acts as if he was in a minimalist movie which is trying to be an artful, compelling but artistically obscure. I assume nobody told him he was just in a regular romantic flick which wanted attract a mainstream audience.
In the Turkish seaport of Trabzon, local Turkish people assume Katya is another Natasha (the word is used to depict Eastern European prostitutes in Turkey). Anna Andrusenko's performance as Katya brought her the best actress award at 49th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. Her debut acting may look top-notch but she's hardly the long-legged, buxom vamp of the street. To mistake the first blonde girl on the street for a hooker is just nonsensical. You can't criticize societal norms of labelling people easily by creating new preposterous stereotypes.
The story, which is claimed to be based on a true story, is not compelling either. Either they took enough liberties or there are enough discrepancies to make it all sound not so compelling in a really predictable story. We see the main character Katya stranded in Trabzon. In spite of the fact she is rejected by her father over and over again, she doesn't give up on seeking after his father but in the end we find her delivering a trite speech on fatherhood and actually rejecting his fatherhood. I guess the only that makes this movie any different from the clichéd old Turkish movies is that it does not really create a hero out of a repentant father. In spite of all the sentimentality, I don't suppose the audience finds himself/ herself sympathized with the father. If, in his directorial debut, Ahmet Sönmez tried to make an anti-hero out of a father, I am afraid this is not the right genre because his movie looks like collage made from schmaltz, pretentious prime-time TV shows, the papier-mâché façade of art! Those who loved Özcan Alper's "Autumn" will be bitterly disappointed indeed! P.S Veteran actors are known for tackling a vide variety of acccents. Captain Yunus (KADIR INANIR) is actually good at imitating the local dialect at some points. His son and his wife reflect the local dialect of the Black Sea region too but their kids and people around them speak pure Istanbul Turkish, which left me with mixed feelings about the overall acting in this movie.
