A Hollywood movie with a title like this would probably be given to a gushy romance film, possibly where dead people get reincarnated and come back to earth. Here it’s given to an intriguing drama bookmarked by a pair of quasi-accidental deaths that merely leave behind those who grieve. The story begins with a lonely old man, a Turkish German, who asks a prositute to come live with him, but shifts in unexpected directions. To me they were some unlikely directions as well, like the way the man’s son, a professor, doesn’t question the stranger who comes to live with them, or the way the prositute’s daughter finds a lover and a home—the day after she crosses the border into Germany—by begging for money. Hey, maybe that works there. Once the wheels of the story are in motion, it gets better, though. Now in Germany, now in Turkey, the point of view shifts from one character to another in a way such that I became increasingly caught up in the cross-cultural tale.
The writer-director, Fatih Akin, the German-born son of Turkish parents, directly explored identity issues in his previous movie, Head On, but even with an illegal immigrant at the center of the story, only brings them in insofar as they further the story. That story uses locations in a memorable way to tell a universal story of children who disappoint parents, parents disappointing children, and children and parents who come to understand, or at least forgive, each other. Venerable character actress Hanna Schygulla has a strong presence as a grieving mother, but Nurgül Yesilçay is also notable as the female lead.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 8/13/08
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