Gerard Lefort. Un Certain Regard: Zeki Demirkubuz Dissects Adultery. Review.
Un Certain Regard
Zeki Demirkubuz dissects adultery
So cold “Itiraf”
Here’s a film where everything’s positively perfect: elaborate script, well written dialogue, flawless filmmaking technique, inspired actors (Taner Birsel and Basak Koklukaya). All of them are committed to the portrayal of the ordinary drama of a couple’s life. Harun, wealthy engineer, and his bride, Nilgun, are in deep crisis: she cheats on him, he wants her to confess (hence the title, Itiraf, or “Confession”).
The camera operates coldly, a lesson in the dissection of certain wounds of marriage, empty redundancy if there ever was one. Like a Strindberg in Ankara, Zeki Demirkubuz traces his unique path after four films. But how is it possible that all of these qualities leave us as cold as ice? Without resorting to resurrecting the famous phrase, “sublime but annoying” once uttered about a Bergman film, there is a hint of inspiration in the movie. In all fairness, it is known that the sublime is never annoying.
The problem with the film, which creates distance in a repelling style, is precisely his willingness, in a given and already well-outlined genre (the psychological drama), to do everything (too?) well. This care demonstrates at a certain point where it is possible to anticipate what’s going to happen. Thus, when the man pretends to sleep on his side, in the marriage bed, when his wife comes home late, there is little doubt that, a few scenes later, the repetition will occur identically this time with the woman in lieu of the man. Indeed: bingo!
The same thing applies for the masterly subdivision between time of speaking and time of silence (significance) at a point of obligatory parity. It is not certain whether some cuts on the city of Ankara are systematically a good idea to express the feeling that depression in the movie is merely psychological. Like a lamb, Itiraf is a film too well strung.
Gerard Lefort. 2002.
Translated from French by Lorenzo Pesoli.
