An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Fatih Akin.
Cast: Nurgul Yesilcay, Baki Davrak, Nursel Kose, Tuncel Kurtiz
Description: Seventy-something Ali is alone, apart from his university professor son Nejat, and seeks emotional and physical comfort in the arms of prostitutes. He is especially enamoured with straight-talking Yeter and offers her money to stay with him rather than work the streets. She agrees, forming a close bond with the old man and his son. However, tragedy strikes and the story moves to Turkey where Yeter's activist daughter Ayten is on the run from the authorities under an assumed name. Fleeing her home country, Ayten ends up in Hamburg where an affair with a politician's daughter has far-reaching consequences.
Country: GER/TUR. 2007. 121mins
Turkish delight: Ali (Tursel Kurtiz) embarks on a fatal plan with a prostitute (Nursel Kose)
Faith Akin, the German-born Turkish writer-director who won fame and major festival awards with Head-On, has now made five films. This is his least melodramatic and most assured.
Shot in Germany and Turkey, it follows the fortunes of four Turks and two Germans as their lives fatefully intertwine.
One of them is Ali (Tursel Kurtiz, one of Turkey's best actors), a septuagenarian who goes to a brothel and asks his favourite prostitute (Nursel Kose) to live with him. He has a heart attack with the effort of trying to be young again and then kills her by accident after a quarrel.
His son (Baki Davrak), a professor at a German university teaching sleepy students about revolutionary ideas, is disgusted.
He seeks out the prostitute's daughter (Nurgul Yesilkay) to assuage his imprisoned father's guilt.
The girl forms a sexual liaison with a radical young German woman (Patrycia Ziolkowska) whose mother (Hanna Schygulla, a veteran of Fassbinder films) betrays her to the Turkish authorities.
This seemingly convoluted plot, dealing unobtrusively with divergent cultures, love and forgiveness, slowly but surely and without any false drama, makes its points about a fractured society striving for some sort of happiness.
The acting alone justifies it - but Akin's new-found skill at whispering rather than shouting at his audience (as he did in the heavily accented Head-On) makes this a satisfying drama.
It seems to drift occasionally - there are scenes which don't push the story forward, like the frightening experience of the prostitute faced with two religious fundamentalists on a bus - but there's hardly ever a purposeless moment.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Morning:
11°c
