Tempo de Amar

Directing: 6 /Acting: 7 /Story: 6 /Production values: 6 /Suspence - Thriller level: 3 /Action: 3 /Mystery - unknown: 7 /Romance level: 10 /Comedy elements: none

This is the best Turkish film I have ever seen even though it was filmed in 1965. The film stories a man who fell in love with a picture of a woman. The man represents eastern understanding of love which desires not to be with his lover. Because he is afraid if the lover is different than his dreams and his love itself gives a great pleasure to him, not the lover, this pleasure makes him a lover. Our female character Meral is a typical western woman with her relationship with her friends musical preferences etc... Love of this two characters lets us to analyze both of the cultures. Beautiful view of 1960's Istanbul makes you feel the heavenly atmosphere.

It looks like a Mexican soap opera, absurd plot from beginning to end, ridiculous dialogues, very bad sound effects, one wonders, and where is the director? Or maybe it was the time and what was done in Turkey, the villain is very bad, the good one is poor, fetishist and stupid. At least the woman does not follow a submissive role, but she does lose love, like a good soap opera. The music tires. The scene of the father-in-law and the son-in-law is pathetic, only the photography stands out, it is very contemplative and tired, a predictable ending, it could be a short film of 20 minutes maximum, it is to be seen in 2x if possible or avoid it completely.

10/10. I admit I'm no Turkish cinema expert since they only cover 2,4% of all movies I've seen. I could easily say Nordic movies which covers more than 10% in my list, have better concerns for my cinema cause. Having these fun-facts, I'd never imagine a Turkish director would be the person who shot the closest thing as in Ingmar Bergman's style.

Another fact: Persona: 66', Sevmek Zamanı:65'

The difference between "cold/liberal Northern European culture" and "a culture which is heavily exposed agitated stories of arabesque style" referred to Turkish people might have seem major. But not in this surreal movie composed by the beautiful elements of experimental cinema and Rembet music. Great camera-work definitely helps Sevmek Zamanı to create a category in my taste as the most beautiful cult movie of my homelands

Take a knock-off Marcelo Mastroianni, except wooden as an actor, add a storyline that invests the two adult principal characters with the emotional intelligence of starry-eyed pre-teenagers, punch it up with a desperately over-the-top soundtrack and whaddaya get? A romantic flick that's so bad it borders on camp. Filmed in gorgeous b&w, with more pathetic fallacy than a human can tolerate-constant rain, tossing waves, whipping winds-not to mention the scene with three women running through the woods in high heels! Hilarious.

Supposedly worshipped by film aficionados, you're better off watching this on mute with no subtitles.