Uzak

The Turkish film Uzak (Distant) took the Grand Prix and Best Actor awards at Cannes last year, and it’s as grandly, haughtily arthouse in complexion as one might reasonably expect for a work thus honoured. There’s a Nanni Moretti-ish preoccupation with minutiae coloured by grey, continental alienation. And of course it’s an intensely, resolutely filmic enterprise – never inclined to use a line of dialogue where a subtle, quiet six-minute scene will do – and draped in long, languorous (and geographically predictable) Middle Eastern rhythms.
The wintry, near-wordless action (ahem) sees boorish, unemployed hick Yusuf (Toprak) travelling to Istanbul to stay with his divorced, anally retentive, sullen cousin Mahmut (Ozdemir). Ostensibly, Yusuf is seeking gainful employment, but he’s more often sniffing after passing long-tressed girls, while his equally forlorn relative yearns after his ex-wife. Excepting one Lord Tebbit-worthy ‘on-yer-bike’ outburst from Mahmut, the stormy chemistry between these mismatched males is established exclusively through awkward silences and accumulated visual cues, so it’s an Odd Couple riff with less bickering, more introspection.
This may sound positively purgatorial, and indeed, things are initially teetering toward tedium, but Uzak sort of sneaks up on you with its unflagging humanism and raw emotional punches (watch for the rodent moments) to form an affecting anatomy of loneliness. If that sounds a tad miserabilist, there’s also enough savage, butch humour to counterweight. ‘Throw the money in the bastard’s face’, Yusuf advises his mummy for her forthcoming dental appointment, and we’d expect nothing less from the alpha-nation that inspired Graham Souness to brandish that Galatasaray flag with such moustachioed abandon.
Primarily though, Uzak is a visual experience with lots of lingering, unfussy camerawork – even the meditative establishing shots have meditative establishing shots. It’s a flawless composition scored around Turkish male bonding. And incredibly, there’s not a bathhouse in
sight.

110mins. Cert IFI members. Opens May 28