Climates

Climates (Turkish: Iklimler) is the 4th feature film of the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The film mostly focuses on relationships. Long takes of head shots, and poetic landscapes. Long silences with casual sounds highlighted - the sound on a cigarette burning when a woman draws on it. 

Climates

It was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI Award there. Climates charts the decline and possibility of renewal of a professional Istanbul couple, Bahar and Isa, played by Nuri Ceylan and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan.

Plot

The film starts on a summer holiday in Kas, where the couple are barely talking. Isa is taking pictures of ancient monuments for a perpetually unfinished thesis or university class he teaches - Bahar watches.

At the beach she falls asleep and dreams of being smothered in sand by him. Riding back to the city on a motorbike she suddenly covers his eyes with her hands and the bike crashes. They break up and go their separate ways. She tells him not to call.

Back in Istanbul, Isa rekindles a relationship with a female friend Serap. He drags her onto the floor in her apartment and they have rough sex.

He dreams of a holiday in the sun but instead flies to the snowy eastern province of Turkey, Ağrı, where Bahar is working as an art director filming a drama on location. He tries to win her back, but she rejects his advances. She has obviously lost her father recently, but he is indifferent to her suffering. She comes to his hotel room late at night and stays over night. But in the morning he flies off alone.

Reception

Controversially, this is Nuri Ceylan's first film shot in HD. At the premiere in Cannes, he was widely criticised, as the format was considered inappropriate for his poetic, long take style. Critics have generally been kinder however. Ceylan claims the use of HD was influenced by his insecurity about his own acting abilities and the ability to do countless retakes until he was happy with his own performance.