Film Review: Yellow Letters Is Beautifully Shot Yet Emotionally Distant

★★★½

Life is almost too good for Derya and Aziz, a celebrated artist couple from Turkey, until an incident at their play’s premiere. Suddenly targeted by the state and struggling to balance their ideals with life’s necessities, their marriage, their family, and their perception of their identity are pushed to breaking point.

Aziz (Tansu Bicer) is a cynical and, at times, almost cold and stoic playwright and academic, whose attitude towards the Turkish government is recorded by one of his students during a lecture while a student protest is happening outside.

The central premise of Yellow Letters is that, because of his actions, he must flee to Istanbul with his actress wife, Derya (Ozgu Namal) and teenage daughter, Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas).

Derya is the local theatre legend who’s the toast of the town. Her artistic malaise and arrogance lead to her snubbing a local official at her latest opening night, which also causes problems for the family.

The content of the play, allegedly criticising the government, is never stated, nor is it necessary. It’s not the nature of the play that is important; it’s the unravelling of everyone’s lives.

The first part of the story is set in Ankara, Turkiye, but filmed in Berlin. Captions read on the screen, “Berlin as Ankara.” (Hamburg is later introduced as the city playing Istanbul.) Censorship, artistic integrity, personal responsibility and moral bravery are the centre of the film, so linking two major German cities as stand-ins during an authoritarian dictatorship is an intelligent, if not obvious choice.

©Ella Knorz if Productions Alamode Film

The concept links to the tragic, if not now romanticised, visions of intellectuals fleeing the final days of the Weimar Republic because they can see the approach of the Nazis, or even the plight of many artists around the world today who find their creative freedom restricted by authoritarian governments.

Aziz and a number of his university colleagues receive ‘yellow letters’; their termination notices, basically a ruse for outlining their sedition and their crimes against the state.

With a Jacobean, star-chamber court proceeding on their heels, the family relocates. No income, no work, Aziz gets a job through Derya’s brother’s contact, driving a taxi. There is a whole meta-film; a play-within-a-movie, TV show within a movie motif running throughout the narrative.

The family seem to constantly not grasp the seriousness of their situation. Maybe it’s a comment on their privilege, as is pointed out several times by other characters: they were able to still create and perform under the regime, yet others couldn’t. The film constantly hints, or ‘tells’ the menace of the current ruling party, but it is almost never shown.

There’s an arrogance to all three members of the family that feels rather alarming. There is such a lack of fear, a lack of urgency from Aziz and Derya that is particularly concerning; they act like Aziz lost his job because the company was downsizing, rather than because he faces charges of sedition.

The cinematography is stunning. The acting is actually quite good, but it is let down by the pacing and the heavy-handed dialogue. There is a banality to the film and to the characters that is hard for the audience to build any connection to.

To continue with the meta-film/theatre concept, the dialogue is more like a stage play rather than your typical feature film. At points, dialogue is meandering and runs paradoxically to the action. So often in film, less is more; what isn’t said is just as powerful, if not more than what is said.

©Ella Knorz if Productions Alamode Film

There are times throughout the film that we think they’ve settled into their new place in the world, living with Aziz’s mother (İpek Bilgin), who seems to be, on-screen, a feminist, but then off-screen apparently is a conformist, or is snooping through her granddaughter’s things.

It’s hard to find the perspective of Yellow Letters. Is it a feminist film? Is it a left-wing attack on right-wing totalitarianism? Is it a meditation on the slow decline of a relationship where a couple seem to just go through the motions day-by-day? Is it all the above yet somehow none of it?

Just when we think there will be one final conflict, one final gut-wrenching dramatic moment where their lives change for the better or for worse, what should be the most climactic and chaotic, almost cathartic moment in the film becomes anti-climactic because they’ve been circling it for so long that any moment of energy or any emotional payoff between them has become mundane, almost dull.

No one character really personifies the kind of oppression that the family are facing. Arguments can be made that the parents are oppressed and prisoners in their marriage; their daughter is oppressed by being a very, very Westernised young woman in a predominantly Muslim country.

Her behaviour and her conflict with her parents seem so broad and so universal that there is no real emotive authenticity to them. Derya seems to be the only one who is given any screen time to really escape her oppression and explore a new path.

Derya’s very devout Muslim brother (Aydin Isik) helps the family out as he feels it’s his duty. Yet the assistance he gives to them seems contingent on them doing favours for him or behaving in ways that he approves of.

There is a lot to love about Yellow Letters; there is also a lot that is lacking real emotional substance. The ideas of political oppression, censorship, and artistic integrity cannot find a natural place to land. Too many ideas, too many vignettes, giving the audience a little taste here and there but not really delivering on the main course.

Yellow Letters is on now at select cinemas in Victoria and New South Wales. It screens in Victoria at Classic Cinemas & Lido Cinemas, and in New South Wales at the Ritz Cinemas.

Also screening from 15-18 November at Star Court Theatre, Lismore.

Website: https://rialtodistribution.com/film/yellow-letters/

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