Vesikali Yarim

Lütfi Akad is one of the most important directors of Turkey, he gave our cinema very useful things, a lot of things started with his camera...he was different, he moved cinema from sets to streets, he gave to watchers real world,real people, no star... his actors didn't act in front of the camera, they lived in white-screen...

And I think Akad's the best movie is Vesikali Yarim, because he always directs real stories which everybody can live them, but in this story we can't find anything from us...but we forgot one important thing : director is Lütfi Akad...so again we find us in the white-screen between actors. He can do this. Although story is not from us, he can move us his movie...In this movie, he asked us "Who deserve the real love?" and "Does love deserve the reality?" I won't say anything about answers but if you watch this movie, you will see them easily...

Vesikali yarim (My prostitute love) could be the most striking movie of the classical Turkish movie era aka Yesilcam movies. It depicts both the realistic as well as the careless elements of love and relationships. The characters and the audiences jump into the magical atmosphere of love and then hit the wall of reality. The film begins with the beautiful old Istanbul during 60's and the daily life of a greengrocery man which set the scene with reality and then the whole reality is interrupted by the encounter of the characters in a bar. All sounds fade for a second and Sabiha's magical beauty shows itself among the smoke. And the ordinary reality of Halil's world breaks into pieces with the impact of this encounter. The unexpected nature of love is perfectly depicted in the very beginning of the film. But then reality strikes back for the rest of the film.

In a show Safa Onal --the script writer mentioned its filming. As he told the director Lutfi Akad brought him to the wall where Akad was planning the shoot the argument scene. In his filming language, the wall was assumed to be the symbol of their separate worlds because of the history they tried but not to achieve to leave behind. Akad asked Onal to write an argument scene without a confrontation and Sabiha (Turkan Soray) would only imply her knowing that Halil had been already married. And the result is the most touching dialogue in all classical Turkish cinema, the density of the words progressively escalates and reaches its peak with the sentence "My home is where you are". But she abandons Halil by walking next to this sharp and endless wall of reality.

The rhythm of the love between Halil and Sabiha batters them both during the film. The lyrics of the soundtrack "by breaking my hearth" perfectly match that swinging relationship. They love and hurt each other perfectly. They try to leave the whole past behind them but they are haunted constantly.

There is also a moral in the film. Even though it is hard to understand from the current individualistic perspective of our times the movie underlines the importance of sacrifice for the sake of others. Sabiha renounces her love for the sake of Halil and Halil renounces his love for the sake of his family and children.

As the punch line of the movie says "sometimes loving each other is not enough, we should have met far earlier"

After watching the movie you could feel the pain in your stomach; if you have already experienced a similar situation in your life, you would feel it stronger.