When a commitment phobe loves a woman

Hailed by the movie critic Uğur Vardan as "Turkey’s answer to ’Love Story’," one of Turkey’s favorite directors, Çağan Irmak’s "Issız Adam" hit movie theaters in front of an audience prepared to shed a few tears.

Best translated as the Desert Man (as in desert island), "Issız Adam" tells the heart-breaking love story of two urbanites, claiming the bohemian streets of Istanbul as their own.

Focusing more on the inner turmoil and existential angst of its male protagonist, Alper (newcomer Cemal Hünel), the movie begins with Alper’s sexual encounters with prostitutes, couples found on the internet, basically nights fuelled with casual sex but leading Alper to wake up alone in his bed. Having come from rural Turkey, living on his own in a hip apartment with a job generating a suitable income to lead a prototypical western urban life, Alper represents a breed of male characters in recent Turkish cinema often seen in the movies of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Semih Kaplanoğlu, among other male directors in their 30s and 40s.

Signals of caution overlooked
We are constantly reminded of Alper’s awkwardness and the sense of emptiness he feels in a life that, on the surface, provides him everything he wants but making him lonelier each day. He runs a restaurant, serving hip fusion cuisine to a hip fusion clientele, and avoids calls from the wide range of one-night stands he cannot keep track of with his iPhone. His sense of nostalgia, as well as the growing emptiness, seems to be heightened by his obsession with 70s’ records of Turkish pop music.

In one of his typical hunts for records, he bumps into a young woman looking for a second-hand copy of Thomas Hardy’s "Far From the Madding Crowd." Perhaps for the glimpse of a naivety he has forgotten in his circle of pretentious clientele and the casual one-nighters, or perhaps for something deeper and more personal, Alper becomes intrigued by this woman.

He follows Ada around (Melis Birkan), sometimes to the verge of stalking, in his usual demeanor that oscillates between charming and pestering, a routine that obviously has worked well in the past.

Hesitant at first, Ada finds herself falling for this man that sends signals of caution from the very first day. Running her humble costume shop for children, a humble young woman herself, Ada soon begins overlooking every sign that reminds her that there is your average commitment-phobic guy in front of her eyes, and in her bed for that matter. The breaking point for Ada comes in the form of Alper’s mother, visiting Istanbul for a wedding.

Too busy with his work, and too clueless to figure how to spend quality time with his mother, Alper drops his mother as a loaded package into Ada’s hands. A natural with people, and feeling deep down that this is an opportunity to cement their relationship, Ada spends time Alper’s mother (Yıldız Kültür), taking her around Istanbul. While this unexpected bonding between the girlfriend and the mother serves as a comfort zone for Ada, it works as a ticking bomb for Alper.

Irmak, combining his strengths

The first half of "Issız Ada" feels awkward, the sense of awkwardness in the first days of dating and blossoming of a relationship simply reflect as amateur acting and hurried dialogue. The actors seem to find it difficult to find chemistry, and seem burdened by the weight of a whole feature film on their shoulders as newcomers. Only when the brilliant actress Kültür walks in as Alper’s mother, the acting of the lovers meets expectations. As the relationship begins to crumble, director Irmak starts walking sure-footed, giving the impression that it’s a world he seems to know of, and surely tell its story.

 With "Issız Ada," Çağan Irmak seems to have combined the strengths of two of his movies. The bitterness he feels and the accuracy he manages to convey it about the fall of the modern urban man in his "Mustafa Hakkında Herşey" (All About Mustafa) takes a new dimension in "Issız Adam." While his acclaimed ability to add raw emotions to a story in "Babam ve Oğlum" (My Father and My Son) renders itself to a whole new sentimentality among lovers. If you can brace yourself for 45 minutes of awkward flirting and mediocre acting, you will be in for a powerful commentary on modern urban relations.