What actually prompted me to see this movie was the fact that it was directed by a director like Seyfi Teoman who was nominated for European Discovery of the Year in 2008 with his movie 'Summer Book', which was indeed a promising debut, and the fact that Our Grand Despair was selected to be in competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival but I rarely watch an adaptation without reading the book first. Ender (İlker Aksum) and Cetin ( Faith Al)are in their late thirties. They are childhood friends and they share the same flat, which is something they have been dreaming about for years. Both of them have apparently failed in their pursuit for love. For that matter, the two guys did not go beyond the realms of sexuality in their pursuit though it was not openly mentioned in the movie. Their hard cohabitation is disrupted by Nihal, the sister of their close friend Fikret (Baki Davrak)who happen to lose both of their parents in a traffic accident and we set out to watch two friends torn between social responsibility and following their heart. I'm not necessarily one of the fans of the book.I can say I did not just like Barış Bıçakçı's style which has been claimed to be devoid of any modern logorrhoea and unclarity.The book was written as if it were a letter by Ender to Çetin to give an account of what they went through together.It sounded as if the writer were just talking to himself or just reliving the moment again in his mind.That's why,I believe, some scenes might have sounded so blank for someone who has never read the book. It may have looked irrelevant, redundant and tedious. Some say, they could have used voice-overs with music to cover that void. Because, there is no voice-over and there is so little music in the movie.
Güneş Sayın look cools as the bereaving university student but I can't say the same thing for her as the lively,enchanting young girl who comes out of her depressed shell. İlker Aksum is like not the same guy Ender, from whose point of view you read the whole story in the book,nevertheless, Aksum is good enough to play the role cut out for himself in the script. Faith Al is also not bad when you think about the fact you only get to know about him through Çetin in the book.All in all, if you haven't read the book,the movie may just look 'incomplete' for you. If you have read the book and happened to love it, then it's no doubt that the movie will not satisfy you at all. Let's just hope that the promising Teoman will come up with a better idea next time because whenever cineastes run out of new ideas, they just remember the holy matrimony of silver screen and literature.
