A Small September Affair (2014)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Touches You

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's so beautiful. The location is amazing, makes me wanna go there so much. If anyone knows where the island is, please let me know. What I got frustrated was why was she hallucinating. I wished it was real. Oh well...

There's a lot going on in A Small September Affair. But first, the name in English... Well, it is not a great translation, because it gives something away which it should not. The word in Turkish "mesele" is best translated as "issue" or "problem" as in "there's the issue of what happened in September." Ordinarily, this is a good translation, but when, at the beginning, we are not supposed to have any idea about an affair, the title gives away that there is an affair, it is not such a great choice. In Turkish, the title does not imply an affair and one starts watching the film with the intended ignorance about any affair. The name of the leading female character is Eylul, which means September, so the title plays on the word successfully in Turkish.The acting is done well, the music is perhaps overdone a bit in places, and the usual Turkish melodramatic tendencies are there, but all realistic enough (for after all, we are dealing with Turks here, so lack of sentimentality would be like asking Almodovar not to have anything campy in his films!) The plot is mysterious and successfully unraveled at a good pace. I was aware what the big reveal would be in the end half way into the film, but the film was engaging enough to keep me interested and wait to see how things would happen.Perhaps my biggest complaint is the overwhelmingly stupid narration about ugly people and beautiful people. Ugly people are just dying for a look from beautiful people, and when they get that glance, they just fall in love right away, because ugly people have nothing else they value in their lives and so on. To add to this, the "ugly" male lead is not at all ugly, and the beautiful woman is a fake blond who is OK looking, but nothing special (I am aware she would still be considered special In Turkey...) It is NOT that difficult to find someone who is not traditionally "handsome" by many people's standards, yet the film has failed to do this. Together, the couple looks pretty good, if you ask me. He was horribly dressed in fisherman- looking beach wear most of the time, in an attempt, I am assuming, at making him look "ugly."In the end, big points for a twisty plot that is well-paced. The whole sentimental ugly vs. beautiful people narration should have dealt with the real issues at hand: that the male lead was shy, antisocial, withdrawn, while the female character was fake, shallow, and unable to engage with other people in an emotionally fulfilling way. To attribute these fundamental characteristics to their ugliness or beauty makes one wonder how the writer can have such a shallow point of view.

On one movie site part of the plot summary reads.. "A weird looking, grubby recluse, comes up-to him and proclaims: "Don't you remember me? I'm the man you fell in love with." This description is as convoluted and confusing as watching this movie. You can call Engin Aky a bunch of things, but in this movie, not many would be agreeing with 'weird and/ or grubby.. and Farah Zeynep Abdullah is most definitely a 'her.' The film has some charm.. but the storyline is way too muddled, it's near impossible to kept track what's going on at any one moment from the next. And really the story is so simple, when you come right down to it, it could have presented in an hour TV show..and with commercials the 45 minutes would've been more than enough.

Basically a variation on the Beauty and the Beast story, Kerem Deren's film focuses on the experiences of young İstanbullu Eylül (Farah Zeynep Abdullah), who has a near-fatal accident resulting in the loss of her short-term memory. To help recover it, her friend Berrak (Ceren Moray) takes her back to the island of Bozcaada, where she went for a location-trip, and encountered Tekin (or Tek) (Engin Akürek), an artist with acute agoraphobia. He has forsaken the sophisticated world of İstanbul for an edenic existence in a seaside home, with no one but match-making child Gülşen (Serra Keskin) for company. Eylül finds his existence rather rustic but strangely attractive, a welcome alternative to the hurlyburly of contemporary İstanbul The film juxtaposes Eylül's currently confused state of mind with an analysis of what happened to her in the past; she had a love-affair with Tekin, which became passionate on both sides. Despite the ordinariness of his life, she fell for him; but left him in the belief that she had to return to her metropolitan İstanbul life. Her accident - and subsequent memory-loss - was caused by reading something in the paper about Tekin's fate. The film creates an idyllic world on Bozcaada full of sunshine, quaint buildings and unpopulated cafés; the place where any harassed city-dweller might like to escape to. It is Eylül's misfortune that she does not understand the advantages of this life, or Tekin's true feelings for her. There are a few clichéd moments, especially involving the two lovers on the beach; and Abdullah is at times extremely unconvincing in her role, especially when it comes to communicating her disordered state of mind. Nonetheless BI KÜÇÜK EYLÜL MESELESİ is entertaining to watch.