arabtanguera If you enjoy a movie made up of five-minute close-ups of actors' faces, the sounds of flies and bees, and very little more, this is the movie for you. There is no plot or characterization and some pointless dialogue in the first 45 minutes. I don't know what happens next, because I stopped watching at this point. There are many good Turkish movies out there; this is not one of them.The story, if there is one, is about the breakup of two miserable people, neither of them remarkable in any way. We do not learn much about them except that they are unhappy. One thing that I enjoyed, but that does not make the movie worth seeing, is the natural landscape.

Martin Bradley A self-indulgent art movie about the break-up of a marriage written and directed by the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan in which he stars as the husband and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan appears as the wife who leaves him. Is it therapy or a home-movie for the art house crowd? Or is it an incisive analysis of the things that divide men and women and of how love can come to an end? It improves in the memory if you can divorce yourself from the incestuous feeling that it's just a bit too much like self-abuse and it's certainly bleak enough not to be likable. Likability isn't something Ceylan aspires to. Whether he is 'acting' or playing 'himself' he comes across as a crass egocentric bore; your sympathies lie with the wife, (though initially she, too, seems something of a harridan, her actions at best irrational if not vindicative).The separation occurs reasonably early in the film and then we spend too much time with the self-pitying husband as he tries to figure out his wife's actions. In the meantime he is not above a bit of screwing around himself, cuckolding an old friend. This is a warts-and-all portrait of a marriage, as rough as Strindberg or Albee, and yet it still feels like a vanity project. Woody Allen's movies may be shamelessly autobiographical, certainly in their milieu if not precisely in the literal sense, but Allen is a comic genius who can find humour and absurdity in even the most painful of situations. I worry when a film-maker chooses a subject as obviously close to his heart as this one and then films it with himself as the central character as if it was an observation of 'real life'.On a technical level it is quite masterly with Gokhan Tiryaki's camera luminously observing, often in extreme close-up, the slow and painful death of this relationship and in locations that are far from attractive. This is the first of Ceylan's films that I have seen and their is no doubting his virtuosity. I just wish he had put it to better purpose.

PLepper A minimalistic and thoroughly miserable, painfully slow 90 minutes film about miserable bourgeois Istanbulites in various climates. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan reminds me of Bergman and Ozu but lacks the formers comic touch with kept his best films from descending into tedium and the latter heart.The film follows Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and Bahar (Ebru Ceylan)- the move of casting himself and his wife in a film about a couple smacks a little of self indulgence, lets hope there marriage isn't this bad!. Board Bahar leaves her husband Isa who find solace in ex girlfriend Serap (Nazan Kirilmis-The most annoying lengthy laughs in cinema history) culminating in a very disturbing sex scene where Isa bullies Serep into having sex in a detached continuous take. Isa eventually tracks down Bahar and attempts a reconciliation.This is a film that insists on taking it's time and was for me a chore to watch scenes seem to drag on for ever the director coldly holding the frame on stationary characters, presumable so we can feel there inner turmoil, the worst offender being a scene where he holds the camera on Bahar for about six minutes so she can produce a few tear drops and allow them to run down her face. You got to admire that kind of bravery in a director to go against the Hollywood snappy dialogue and short scenes.Also admirable was the spreading throughout the film of subtle focuses on tiny details, like the sound of a bee, or snow flakes. However the film just isn't very interesting, the characters are undeveloped the script vague the ending unsatisfying, I can appreciate Ceylan intentions and his integrity but this film does very little for me.

atyson Character study of a man at the end of a relationship - Quite simply, if the director's previous movie 'Uzak' (Distant) got under your skin, this one will too. So much so that the movies seem almost complementary. Both movies, about a photographer based in Istanbul, are about distance, about how much we keep to ourselves and how much we (can) share with others. In a dramatically low-key and visually inspired way, they address a great theme: the tension between the public and private, particularly in contemporary urban life. Like the movies of Antonioni or Ozu, shots are very carefully composed. Like the movies of Louis Malle there is considerable humanity at the heart of it all. Whereas 'Uzak' pointed up its main character's foibles and limitations in relation to his putting up a guest in his apartment who is looking for work in the city, 'Climates' addresses similar issues in the break-up (or breakdown) of a relationship. In either movie you will see truths about relationships and the way people live today.