User Reviews

I watched this at the Berlin International Film Festival and was pleasantly surprised how good it felt. Not like a feel good movie (it is drama), but how nicely it was played and written. While it is easy to see the attraction to our main female character, it is another thing to play that convincing. While it may not be without clichés, it still holds its own.

It's the old stranger comes into town (or home or whatever you wanna call it) and of course things start to change. Chemistry is important here, because it is basically people talking and interacting. Sometimes it might only be a look or gesture. But it never gets boring (if you like dramas that is).

What actually prompted me to see this movie was the fact that it was directed by a director like Seyfi Teoman who was nominated for European Discovery of the Year in 2008 with his movie 'Summer Book', which was indeed a promising debut, and the fact that Our Grand Despair was selected to be in competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival but I rarely watch an adaptation without reading the book first. Ender (İlker Aksum) and Cetin ( Faith Al)are in their late thirties. They are childhood friends and they share the same flat, which is something they have been dreaming about for years. Both of them have apparently failed in their pursuit for love. For that matter, the two guys did not go beyond the realms of sexuality in their pursuit though it was not openly mentioned in the movie. Their hard cohabitation is disrupted by Nihal, the sister of their close friend Fikret (Baki Davrak)who happen to lose both of their parents in a traffic accident and we set out to watch two friends torn between social responsibility and following their heart. I'm not necessarily one of the fans of the book.I can say I did not just like Barış Bıçakçı's style which has been claimed to be devoid of any modern logorrhoea and unclarity.The book was written as if it were a letter by Ender to Çetin to give an account of what they went through together.It sounded as if the writer were just talking to himself or just reliving the moment again in his mind.That's why,I believe, some scenes might have sounded so blank for someone who has never read the book. It may have looked irrelevant, redundant and tedious. Some say, they could have used voice-overs with music to cover that void. Because, there is no voice-over and there is so little music in the movie.

Güneş Sayın look cools as the bereaving university student but I can't say the same thing for her as the lively,enchanting young girl who comes out of her depressed shell. İlker Aksum is like not the same guy Ender, from whose point of view you read the whole story in the book,nevertheless, Aksum is good enough to play the role cut out for himself in the script. Faith Al is also not bad when you think about the fact you only get to know about him through Çetin in the book.All in all, if you haven't read the book,the movie may just look 'incomplete' for you. If you have read the book and happened to love it, then it's no doubt that the movie will not satisfy you at all. Let's just hope that the promising Teoman will come up with a better idea next time because whenever cineastes run out of new ideas, they just remember the holy matrimony of silver screen and literature.

I think this film is very dramatic and realistic, the characters are real life person. This movie about 30's bachelors and their traumas about their lifes, relationship and family. I watched this movie in Istanbul Film Festival and then i went a bookshop and bought the novel.

It all happened at a funeral. Fikret(Nihal's elder brother) asked his old friends Cetin and Ender if his sister crush with them for short time in their apartment. Cetin and Ender - two peas in a pod - accepted the offer reluctantly but this hesitance left its place to a powerful attachment. Day by day they wanted to take care of this little girl, whose parents died at a car crash.

Baris Bicakci's (writer of the novel) almost all novels take place in Ankara, which gave his writings a dark but a warm theme like you've always known the main charachter. There is always a nice and shy man and a little bit masculen but pretty woman which he loved loyally.

While you are watching this complicated love triangle you're gonna smile like a child and mourn like lost your beloved. I strongly recommend this film to romantics and love-believers. Be ready for a nice and cozy film. A silent master piece.