Istanbul – Podcasting Them Softly

I wasn’t quite prepared for Can Evrenol’s Housewife, a disarmingly gruesome slow burn horror flick that I went into blindly on purpose. Had I looked it up first I might have seen that Turkish director Evrenol is also responsible for another notoriously fucked up horror called Baskin, which I’ve heard many a rumour about but have been circling for years as I just don’t have the stomach for the heavy stuff like I used to. Anyways I waded into Housewife uninformed and unassuming and, well… it’s quite the fucking experience. It tells of a girl (Clémentine Poidatz) living in Istanbul with her husband, who is troubled by nightmarish dreams of her traumatized youth where she watched her mentally ill mother murder her older sister, for starters. She always feels on the edge of that same mental instability, which is put to the test when she reconnects with an estranged best friend who has become deeply involved with a dangerous doomsday cult, particularly it’s charismatic leader (David Sakurai). The film starts off as an eerie, cerebral, glacial buildup full of terse atmospheric visuals and a truly genius, beautifully spooky musical score but as soon the cult angle barrels into the narrative it gets wild and bloody pretty quick, which is a shocking left turn. The ever present yet unseen threat of something bad turns into a geyser of gore, torn off faces, ruthless umbrella shankings, slimy demonic babies, hooting and hollering insanity of clamouring cult members and a third act that is so far beyond the stratosphere of subtlety that all I could do was laugh with the characters as they succumb to the frenzied, maniacal final beat of the narrative that would be too much if it wasn’t just too damn hilarious in a “throw your hands up and surrender to the shenanigans” type of way. I think I liked the first half of the film more, it feels like the measured, dread soaked first two acts of Rosemary’s Baby in tone and atmosphere, obviously way more R rated, contemporary and balls-out psychosexual than that creaky old classic. And where that one never showed the grisly viscera in person, only ever suggested it, this film shows *everything*, and trust me it ain’t pretty. There’s an ethereal beauty and calculated, delicate menace to the buildup and while the third act fells a tad cluttered, a bit too grotesque in some frames and nothing like the hushed, reverent opening acts, I admired its sheer willingness to plough head on into kinky, perverse, violent sex games and some hysterically over the top Lovecraftian cosmic pandemonium. It’s good, but bring a titanium lined stomach or a Costco orders worth of barf bags because it’s a truly sickening experience, the kind of gross-out Euro erotica shocker madness that most North American audiences just are not used to.

-Nate Hill

There’s a ton of films out there that explore humanity’s symbiotic relationships with animals, from the innocuous sweetness of Beethoven to the whimsical fables of Babe. Ceyda Torun‘s Kedi is a brilliant Turkish documentary that focuses on the wild, independent street cats of Istanbul, lovable, curious creatures who have shared countless bonds with the city’s residents since the dawn of time. A handful of individual felines are shown in the spotlight, each with it’s own distinct personality, behaviour traits and each connected to their own human caretaker or friend. They roam free along the streets, alleys, bazaars and canals of picturesque Istanbul, a place where the hum of the old world still survives, only recently encroached upon by the inevitable advance of technology and progress, an aspect which the film comments on and one that has a big effect on these animals. The film is structured simply and wonderfully: each vignette tells the story of a cat, through the words of their human companion, the auditory component, and visually we see these people and this place through their eyes and interactions they have with all those around them. It’s a brilliant, hypnotic rhythm, accompanied by the soothing tones of traditional/electronic hybrid compositions from musician Kira Fontana, and effortlessly creates an immersive, unique atmosphere. You don’t have to be a cat lover to appreciate (but if you aren’t, you’re not cool in my books already) the bond these creatures share with their environment, as it’s fascinating in a scientific way as well, to observe the behaviours, each species intrinsically connected to each other through eons of shared existence. These aren’t docile house cats either, they’ve got the nomad gene through years of genetic memory, yet still function as creatures of habit, and as one girl remarks on camera, “when they’re confined in a house indefinitely, they lose their ‘catness’.” They are an integral, essential part of Istanbul’s soul though, as we see the healing power they have on those who are sad or broken, the therapeutic friendship they provide to all around them, and the way in which they rekindle people’s ‘slowly dying joy of life’, as another character observes, a thought which hit a bit close to home as I heard it. Some may consider this a small or inconsequential film, but make no mistake: this isn’t just ‘a cute cat documentary’, it’s a meditation on some of the core elements of our mindsets and action, relationships and perceptions that many have forgotten in the modern world, and a reminder that animals are more than just furry friends, rather they are an influential force of nature that shape and change our world, as well as us, every day. One of the very best of the year.

-Nate Hill