Climates, by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is about as personal as it gets. Ceylan wrote, directed, edited and stars as Isa, a middle-aged professor chewing over his crumbling relationship with his much younger girlfriend Bahar (played, wouldn't you know it, by his real wife Ebru Ceylan). What begins as a dinner table row while on holiday with friends escalates on the beach, where they agree to split, and then reaches a poisonous, and almost terminal, climax, when a bike ride nearly leads to a fatal accident.
That, however, is about as action-packed as it gets. Climates unfolds through body language and gestures with little by way of dialogue or events. It looks as beautiful as a painting and moves about as fast, with Bahar's relocation to the mountains of East Turkey sparking Isa into life (of sorts) as he decides to follow her in a doomed bid to rekindle the affair. It's a self-conscious and thoroughly art-house exercise that will probably delight the minuscule audience for which it is intended.
That, however, is about as action-packed as it gets. Climates unfolds through body language and gestures with little by way of dialogue or events. It looks as beautiful as a painting and moves about as fast, with Bahar's relocation to the mountains of East Turkey sparking Isa into life (of sorts) as he decides to follow her in a doomed bid to rekindle the affair. It's a self-conscious and thoroughly art-house exercise that will probably delight the minuscule audience for which it is intended.