Egemen (Erdem Akakce) is minor office worker in an advertising agency. He is in his thirties.With his straightforward and unsophisticated attitudes he is a fellow of artless grace and simple goodness but life is not so easy for our somewhat naive leading actor. In spite of being in an early middle age he still lives with his mother Gülseren (Meral Çetinkaya).A pretty imperious mother figure, she is a paranoid nut job. She never steps out of the door (which reminded me of the fellow who suffers from a post-traumatic stress in the movie "Love in Another Language), she detests any human contact so she throws buckets of water out of the window on the heads of kids who always pester her. She also continuously smokes, she never cooks or takes care of the house. She likes to pretend that she is rich and she speaks by using kooky,quaint,and somewhat archaic Ottoman words. On the other hand, Egemen is a handy versatile person at work. He makes tea,he cleans the office and he runs errands for the agency boss,Umay(Derya Alabora).Derya Alabora (who played the night club prostitute in Zeki Demirkubuz's Kader) again plays a woman who hasn't been able to find Mr. Right. For Egemen, anything that pleases Umay is a world of joy.The office environment is the only let-out for him. Even on Sundays he sometimes gets to the office because the only place he can visit is either his aunt's or night shift worker Rıza's place.
This is the first time I have ever seen Erdem Akakce on the silver screen and I think he gives a great performance in portraying a lonely,middle-aged man who has to deal with a crazed mother.Meral Çetinkaya is also perfect as the crazed mother. She has a role which may sound melodramatic at some points but she does her job well by not turning her situation into gushy pathos. You do not find her sympathetic or cute but in the end you understand what she must have gone through.
In spite off all this cinematic tour-de-force, still some of the things in the movie did not quite convince me. Though I understand this is his animadversion on a wicked sense of gender-bound concept "namus",Cagan Irmak could have produced a better scenario for the reason behind the crazed mother's post-traumatic stress. Because "rape" sounds so predictable and it's a well-worn cliché in the history of Turkish cinema.If Irmak had come up with a more creative story which was not so easy to predict and with a bit more suspenseful twists and turns the story would have been more lively and credible. Moreover, for such a touchy story the soundtracks could have been produced in a more memorable way. Other than the classical track used throughout the movie there is no memorable music in the movie. That's not to say the movie is a forgettable one but all I am saying it could have been way better than that.
This is the first time I have ever seen Erdem Akakce on the silver screen and I think he gives a great performance in portraying a lonely,middle-aged man who has to deal with a crazed mother.Meral Çetinkaya is also perfect as the crazed mother. She has a role which may sound melodramatic at some points but she does her job well by not turning her situation into gushy pathos. You do not find her sympathetic or cute but in the end you understand what she must have gone through.
In spite off all this cinematic tour-de-force, still some of the things in the movie did not quite convince me. Though I understand this is his animadversion on a wicked sense of gender-bound concept "namus",Cagan Irmak could have produced a better scenario for the reason behind the crazed mother's post-traumatic stress. Because "rape" sounds so predictable and it's a well-worn cliché in the history of Turkish cinema.If Irmak had come up with a more creative story which was not so easy to predict and with a bit more suspenseful twists and turns the story would have been more lively and credible. Moreover, for such a touchy story the soundtracks could have been produced in a more memorable way. Other than the classical track used throughout the movie there is no memorable music in the movie. That's not to say the movie is a forgettable one but all I am saying it could have been way better than that.