Araf

In her 5th feature, Yesim Ustaoglu celebrates the ingenuity of approaching to the story of today. Remarkable observations on regular lives in a small town of Turkey leads a sudden empathy of viewer. In Karabuk, a town on the main road between two biggest cities of Turkey, Istanbul and Ankara, everyone and everything is passing by and that transience causes a strong gap between the present and the future, on its inhabitants. Specifiying this transition point trickily symbolize the zeitgeist of Turkey, stumbling between modern and traditional. In such atmosphere, characters feel the same stagnancy while dreaming about a sudden and easy way to slip through the net, and waiting for a miracle, whatever it's about-money, love or happiness. Such representation of today and -what I like most about Araf / Somewhere in Between is- its bold language, are the elements which make the movie extremely strong and success to make the audience feel being stuck, so an identification.

Set in the small town of Karabuk, midway between Istanbul and Ankara, ARAF (Limbo) explores the empty lives of two young people, both of whom work in a roadside restaurant. Olgun (Baris Hacihan) has a drunken father and a mother who becomes so frustrated that she eventually abandons the family; he loves Zehra (Neslihan Atagul) but cannot find words to express his feelings. The teenage Zehra is looking for a way out of her monotonous life; she believes she has found it when she has an affair with trucker Mahur (Ozcan Deniz), but this soon fizzles out, leaving her pregnant and alone. Too scared to tell her family about what has happened, she has the stillborn baby in the bathroom at the local clinic. Once Olgun finds out about what has happened to Zehra, he embarks on an orgy of violence that lands him in jail. Yesim Ustaoglu's film is similar in terms of subject-matter to Pelin Esmer's recent GOZETLEME KULESI (The Watchtower); both explore the lives of young women growing up in rural societies, with little prospect for their futures other than marriage. Too frightened to confess their real feelings in front of their (traditional) families, they are left isolated and doomed to suffer. Rather disappointingly, however, Ustaoglu does not explore her characters in any great depth; while she incorporates several lingering close-ups of Zehra and Olgun in profile, she does not tell us much about their relationship to those closest to them. While understanding the frequent silences - as the characters cannot find words to communicate with one another - the narrative tends to sag in places. At just over two hours, ARAF is perhaps half an hour too long; the story would have been equally effective if it had been recounted more concisely.

"Every moment that we haven't seen, heard, touched or smelled before will start to reverberate in us in a very different way and take another form once we experience it. In Araf, I tried to touch upon those fleeting moments and feelings that can occur." – Yeşim Ustaoğlu

In a disintegrating town midway between Istanbul and Ankara, two teenagers search for something better. A girl (in a luminous performance by Neslihan Atagül) starts to pursue the desire awakening in her body while the boy-next-door hopes that a TV show will change his life.

Molten slag breaks forth. A windshield wiper does not stop rain. And nothing can be the same.

It is an okay film if you don't have great expectation.It shows a good portrait of the dull lower "class" Turkish people's life;their naive yet unreachable dreams,their hopes,their struggles,their obstacles.When they were supposed to go to college,two main characters were working for financial support.They desire the things that is normal for their peers.They feel trapped but they have no where to go,no money on top of those their families' expectations and society's prejudices have weigh on them much more and their struggle to escape in any way crashes into wall.But i didn't like the second half,unlike first half this part wasn't very well developed ,there were things i couldn't understand.End was okay but process could be better.Film made me think but when movie ended,first thing crossed my mind was it could have been better.

I am a big fan of Turkish and World Art-house Drama and Romantic movies. Looking for the festivals and big directors of era especially Haneke,Trier and Ceylan and Kim Ki-duk. But today i found just another one named Yeşim Ustaoğlu. You can feel the taste of Zeki Demirkubuz and N. Bilge Ceylan's movies in her last shot. By the way Shooting the drama movies aren't so easy in these days. There are a few movies in genre to keep you make feel the real pain and sadness for example Haneke's Amour and Zeki Demirkubuz's Kader.

Don't like to write much and spoil the movie but just one word; you should see the dramatic story of Zehra (Neslihan Atagül) who was captivated in between love ,trust and fate in the hands of darkness and pain.

just another Fabulous Turkish cinema a must see...