Climates

By Staff -- Video Business, 6/18/2007

ZEITGEIST

Street: June 26
Prebook: now

> Turkish breakup saga is distinguished by stylish visuals.

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan cast himself in the lead role of this introspective, minimalist portrait of a breakup. Ceylan plays a professor who still has feelings for his disillusioned girlfriend, played by his real-life wife, Ebru Ceylan. The film's most impressive moments find Nuri Bilge Ceylan adopting visual techniques made famous by the European masters of the '60s, most notably Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. One obliquely framed montage of the lovers regarding each other is a direct homage to this style of filmmaking. Climates is far from Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage, but Ceylan's earnest, emotional approach offers rewards for patient viewers.

Shelf Talk: Turkish cinema is a specialty taste for American moviegoers, but Climates comes to DVD with a pedigree of positive reviews and the FIPRESCI Prize from Cannes in 2006. It's recommended to viewers with a taste for traditional European arthouse titles.

Foreign-language drama, color, NR (mature themes, sexual situations, language), 97 min., DVD $29.99, Turkish with English subtitles
Extras: video interviews with director/star and lead actress, featurettes, “Climates at Cannes”
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
First Run: L, Oct. 2006, <$1 mil.

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