Review of When We Leave

Austrian actress Feo Aladag's directorial debut touches upon the concept of "namus" which has been treated many times before. Namus,which is roughly translated as "honor" is a female-bound ethical category in patriarchal societies. It is ostensibly a part of the traditionalist Muslim societies but the concept "namus" actually predates Islam and the Judeo-Christian religion. Regarded as the perfect form of female appropriateness today,namus in time lost its connection with religion and became an expression of hidebound traditionality.What makes this concept a popular subject for the cinema makers is the fact that the very concept does not set any rules for men in uber-conservative societies.In such a society males are supposed to control the women in their families. The fact that men are unaccountable for their actions while women should act perfectly along the line of appropriateness shows that "namus" came to be social mores that has not much to do with religion. In the movie Sibelli Kekilli plays a battered housewife who has been continuously abused by her husband. When she can't take it anymore she decides to go back to her family in Germany. Her family gives her a chilly welcome when they realize she is planning to leave her husband. Presumably from a generation of Gastarbeiter, the family is utterly conservative and a daughter's coming back to family with her kid and ending her marriage is unthinkable for them no matter how violent her husband would be. No matter how many times it has been treated before, the subject is a humanitarian one.It is not difficult to denounce the tartuffery of pious morality but you need to get credits for that. Die Fremde does not exactly offer a thought-provoking portrait of a damsel in distress.It feels like shouting at your face and telling you "I have thought of everything for you." Umay pursues an effectively independent way for herself and her son. She leaves her husband, she even leaves her family when she realizes that they will take her son from her. What does she do then? In spite of the warnings of foster home authorities, she continues to see her family. Though she gets physically attacked by her brother, she goes to her sister's wedding. Is that the way a girl who wants be independent should act? Why should a girl who has found a -sweet,caring boyfriend who wants be a father for her kid- be a pathetic person? Feo Aladag criticizes the stubbornly prejudiced, narrow-minded and inflexible mores of this society but she just indulges in incoherences. When Umay's mother Halime (Derya Alabora) hears that her other daughter Rana (Almila Bagriacik) is pregnant from her boyfriend all she says is "We're ruined." and the father just sighs when her wife says "they must get married". In a family like the one in the movie, Rana is supposed to be killed because of having blemished family's honor. What does the father do? The father chooses to pay the boy's father to get a definite marriage.Instead the family decides to kill the other daughter who can legally get a divorce.Let alone the fact the the characters do not act like a Turk (when the conversation turns into Turkish the characters do not sound as natural as they sound in Turkish.No Turkish-Muslim watches his son's imitative praying instead of following the imam during the salat in the mosque)they do not really give the reactions you expect from a traditionalist family. Sibel Kekilli's acting is superb but the story remains unconvincing,slipping too easily into melodrama and a series of incoherent scenes.