SENİN HİKAYEN (YOUR STORY) is perhaps the least satisfying film of director Tolga Örnek's oeuvre to date.
A rom-com set in modern-day İstanbul, the story focuses on the efforts of Esra (Selma Ergeç) and Hakan (Timuçin Esen) to have a baby. Eventually they manage to do so, and experience the pains and pleasures of child-birth and looking after a young child. This story of new life is contrasted with that of Hakan's mother Meral (Nevra Serezli), who has to cope with successive bouts of cancer. Although she experiences the pleasure of seeing and looking after her grandchild, the disease eventually gets the better of her. The "story" of the title refers to her chronicle of Hakan's life, as set down in a scrapbook, which Hakan decides to continue for his son Derin's (Derin Örnek's) benefit.
The film includes stylistic devices characteristic of Örnek's earlier work, such as speeded-up sequences of daily life in İstanbul (from KAYBEDENLER KÜLÜBÜ) and a series of comic routines focusing on Hakan's inabilities to look after his son (from DEVRİM ARABALARI). But apart from a thematic focus on the importance of the family as a foundation of a stable society, SENİN HİKAYEN is a slight tale, whose cloying sentimentality eventually becomes wearing. The fact that Örnek should have helmed such a film, especially in light of his earlier work, might appear surprising until we see that it has been produced by TAFF Productions, Çağan Irmak's company. This kind of film is characteristic of Irmak's oeuvre: maybe Örnek understood this and acted accordingly.
A rom-com set in modern-day İstanbul, the story focuses on the efforts of Esra (Selma Ergeç) and Hakan (Timuçin Esen) to have a baby. Eventually they manage to do so, and experience the pains and pleasures of child-birth and looking after a young child. This story of new life is contrasted with that of Hakan's mother Meral (Nevra Serezli), who has to cope with successive bouts of cancer. Although she experiences the pleasure of seeing and looking after her grandchild, the disease eventually gets the better of her. The "story" of the title refers to her chronicle of Hakan's life, as set down in a scrapbook, which Hakan decides to continue for his son Derin's (Derin Örnek's) benefit.
The film includes stylistic devices characteristic of Örnek's earlier work, such as speeded-up sequences of daily life in İstanbul (from KAYBEDENLER KÜLÜBÜ) and a series of comic routines focusing on Hakan's inabilities to look after his son (from DEVRİM ARABALARI). But apart from a thematic focus on the importance of the family as a foundation of a stable society, SENİN HİKAYEN is a slight tale, whose cloying sentimentality eventually becomes wearing. The fact that Örnek should have helmed such a film, especially in light of his earlier work, might appear surprising until we see that it has been produced by TAFF Productions, Çağan Irmak's company. This kind of film is characteristic of Irmak's oeuvre: maybe Örnek understood this and acted accordingly.
