Kiss kiss bang bang in Three Monkeys

Three Monkeys is a noirish thriller — boasting an explosive beginning, middle and end. The pace is still slow and the kiss-kiss bang-bangs take place off camera, but the effect is seismic.
A politician called Servet (the exquisitely sweaty Ercan Kesal) is involved in a hit-and-run accident and gets his phlegmatic driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) to take the rap: in return for money, Eyup will spend a year in jail. The only problem is that Eyup’s frustrated, layabout son, Ismail (Rifat Sungar) wants money now and Ismail’s anxious wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), decides to ask for an advance payment.

She dresses up for the occasion and only then do we realise what a beauty she is. So does Servet. It’s one of the failings of the film that you can probably guess much of the rest.

Doomy fate hangs over the four central characters. Are we responsible for our "sins" or are we victims of circumstance? Does money allow us to escape the laws of the jungle or is it the ultimate weapon? Can our response to evil acts inspire good? What is the significance of the weird distorted infants that begin to appear?
Ceylan’s film is full of interesting questions, it’s just a little short on interesting characters. Pawns on a chess board are hard to care about. It’s not the actors’ fault. Aslan has a wonderful face, reminiscent of screen goddesses from the past (Paulette Godard and Ava Gardner, in particular) and conveys tension beautifully.

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While visiting the politician, her mobile phone starts ringing — a hysterical, lovelorn pop song. The more she struggles to find the phone, the more it eludes her, and you feel her horror.

Ceylan’s use of the camera and light are also spot-on. Ismail enjoys an existential spasm at a train station: he’s so tormented that even his guts are in revolt and, before he spills them, the colour of his face, shirt and surroundings change. Bleached-out, blaring and discordant, the sequence tells us in nanoseconds what a voiceover would struggle to convey in umpteen words.

The same sense of economy informs the shots of Ismail and his mum watching TV. The off-centre camera — as if spying on them — catches the pair huddled on the sofa, uneasily intimate. Their bodies aren’t entwined. We can see, however, that their lives are.

Sadly, the plot gets in the way of such subtlety. Dennis Potter explored similarly pulpy territory in The Singing Detective, but managed to keep the story grounded. Ceylan, perhaps a little too awestruck by his own powers, all but loses his way.

Three Monkeys (Uc Maymun)
Cert: 15