THREE MONKEYS / UC MAYMUN - brutal, languid, tragic

"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil".

THREE MONKEYS is set in motion by a hit and run accident on a mountain road. But Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan doesn't make films where you see crucial events presented as beautifully staged set pieces. Rather, his movies focus on the emotional consequences of events - lingering over glances, refusing to pull away from brutal arguments - mining the internal lives of his characters. The protagonists are neither paragons nor villains. They are complex and have shifting loyalties. Take, for instance, the man who causes the accident. He's an oleaginous, cynical politician who bribes his driver to take the rap but later seems almost sympathetic and vulnerable. The driver and his son are at once domineering and listless. Both condemn others but themselves resist guilt - passing it forward, remaining complicit, callow, victimised. Look at the driver's wife: an equally fascinating but shifting character. With small gestures she transforms from a mousy, put-upon house-wife into a woman rediscovering her sexuality.

As with all Ceylan films, the intensity of the emotional journey is matched by evocative cinematography. DP Gokhan Tiryaki manages to shoot a deserted rail track or a decrepit concrete building and make it look as fascinating and evocative as a sweeping panorama of the Bosphorus. All of this adds up to a movie in which every gesture, every glance is meaningful, and where the audience can be oppressed by the tension. This has been taken by some as a fault of the movie. It's true: it's no easy watch. But that is, I think, it's strength.

UC MAYMUN played Cannes 2008 where Nuri Bilge Ceylan won Best Director, beating Clint Eastwood (CHANGELING); Soderbergh (CHE); Ari Folman (WALTZ WITH BASHIR) and the Dardennes Brothers (THE SILENCE OF LORNA). Indeed, the only director in the list that I feel was unfairly overlooked was Paolo Sorrentinto for the outstanding IL DIVO. UC MAYMUN also played Toronto 2008. It opened last year in Taiwan, Turkey, Mexico, Norway, Greece and Portugal. It opened earlier this year in Croatia and France and opens this weekend in the UK. It opens in Germany on March 19th.

CLIMATES/IKLIMLER - brutally honest

CLIMATES is the latest film from the Turkish auteur, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (UZAK). It is an uncompromising, unflinching examination of an emotionally abusive relationship. Ceylan plays a middle-aged university lecturer who treats his younger girlfriend with a casual indifference. Bored with her, he suggests a split. He has a brief fling with a more sexually and emotionally confident woman, but is stung by a reference to his ex-girlfriend. He offers himself to her again, with promises of reform. She refuses him but - and this is no spoiler to those who know the fatalistic, bleak nature of Ceylan's work - eventually relents.

From such thin material, Ceylan creates a visceral, painful portrait of a woman who goes back into an unsatisfactory relationship knowingly, and with quiet, tearful resignation. He also creates a character in Isa - the lecturer - that is more than the cliche commitment-phobic middle-aged man. I honestly got the impression that Isa did not see that he was behaving badly. He just did what he did. The older woman sees this and plays along. Despite physical submission we don't feel she is any real danger. By contrast, the younger woman seems to be signing on for life imprisonment.

The strength of the film lies in the uncompromising honesty of every aspect of the production. The performances are quiet and authentic rather than histrionic. The dialogue and orchestral score are spare. The photography is austere, forcing us to concentrate on the internal life of the characters, thanks to static tableaux and intrusive close-ups. But most importantly, in the age of the disposable romantic-comedy or the crass melodrama, Ceylan dares to be brutally honest about the reality of modern relationships.

CLIMATES/IKLIMLER played Cannes, where it won the FIPRESCI prize, and Toronto 2006. It was released in Turkey, the US, Norway and Greece in 2006 and is currently playing in France and the UK. It opens in Austria on March 23rd nd in Italy on May 4th.