User Reviews

To watch this film the viewer needs to be active. You cannot seat passively and enjoy. Acting skills are not helping to enjoy but still you wonder how it will end. The viewer get many clues to guess the end. The clues have been created very creatively but there is one what creates misunderstanding. If the viewer is active, all these efforts will not be rewarded. There is a saying that one picture tells more then 1000 words. Well, this film shows 1000 shots to tell 1 word, which is also an art of course. Finally this film contributes to promotion of Turkey by shots of beautiful places. You start to believe that every place in Turkey is the most beautiful place of the world. This film could be a homework film only.

Tatil Kitabı is a family story told from the eyes of a ten-year old boy named Ali(Tayfun Günay).The story is set in the Mediterranean town Silifke (Seleucia).Mustafa(Osman İnan),the father of the family, has citrus groves where he employs lots of people. He makes his living by selling lemons,oranges etc. Apparently he is an aspiring and purposeful merchant who wants his two sons to be like him too but "like father like son" is not exactly the thing he is bound to face up. He takes Ali to the place he carries out his transactions every day. When his wife Güler (Ayten Tokun) insists that he should leave the boy alone so that he could spend the summer by playing with his friends like any other kid would do, he just challenges his wife by telling her:"At his age, my father had me working on the building sites in Adana." Later on, he buys a pack of chewing gums for Ali to sell them on the streets. Of course, Ali's only problem is not the gums he has to vend but he also has to deal with the boy he bullies him. His other son, teenager Veysel (Harun Ozuag)wants to leave the military academy he enrolled in at his father's request and he wants to study in some civilian college but he can't do so because of the high compensation that has to be paid to the army. Hasan (Taner Birsel),the uncle of the family,Mustafa's brother has always been the stubborn one on the other hand. When he was wanted near,he went off to Ankara to study.Just when he was finishing,he dropped out of school to get married.Right when he was supposed to settle down and be happy he got divorced and he is back in Silifke to carry on the butchering business of his late father. When Mustafa has a brain hemorrhage on his way back from a business trip to Ürgüp (a town in Cappadocia)Mustafa becomes more involved with the family of his brother. At first, he is bound to solve the mystery behind Güler's suspicion. Güler thinks that her husband has been two-timing her because he keeps going off to business trips so often now. In her opinion, he has turned into a cranky,impossible man,he's managed to drive his son away and he finally fell out with his own brother.

When you think about the story in this context, you believe this would absolutely make a lovable story. "Summer Book" was one of the four leading candidates for the European Discovery award and this is one of the other reasons that would make you want to see the movie too. Here on IMDb some user from Netherlands says "To watch this film the viewer needs to be active. You cannot seat(sic) passively and enjoy". For someone who has been to somewhere close to the story set in, for someone who has known a bit of those people still living a traditional life the acting would not be so convincing.For instance,anyone who has been a kid once would know how a fight between a local kid and another kid bullying him would look like. That fight scene looks so rigidly constrained or awkward as to lack all grace and spontaneity. It just looks so stilted.What about the tiff between wife and husband? Their conversation sounds like they are on a talk show discussing the latest health benefits. No wonder why someone who is not familiar with the region says the above-mentioned sentence. Other than the acting, the magnificent view the Taurus mountains and the Göksu river (ancient Calycadnus)that are seen in detail sounds like a boost to attract tourists to the area. The camera angles to shoot the Mediterranean at sunset are just perfectly arranged. In short, if you have some time to watch "artistic cinema" offering magnificent views of a Mediterranean town go for it but if you say "Nope I watch movies just to have fun" than this movie may not be right option for you.