The problem with an education is that you have to work so much harder for enjoyment. Or search harder and longer anyway. After watching L'eclisse earlier this year I can't help but think of Climates as Antonioni-lite. Virtually the same preoccupation with alienation, isolation and the impossibility of meaningful emotional connections between people (especially lovers) but without the technical skill or vision or artistry required to lift the plot from being merely anecdotal to something more profound and provocative.
I'm mystified as to why the film has been so critically acclaimed. Have any of these people even watched Antonioni? Surely, it's not a radical gesture to make a movie about relationships that isn't a RomCom? huh?
Plot outline: Ageing architecture professor and younger TV art director girlfriend split up after summer holiday. Man stumbles through halting relationships with family, colleagues and lovers before travelling to snowy, (eastern?) wastes of Turkey to win back the girl. Having successfully done so, he reverts to being an asshole eventually leaving the girl devastated and alone. Move closes with her crying in the snow.
Maybe I'm just being mean, but the knowledge that it's a Turkish film made on a no-doubt miniscule budget helps to undermine the director's artistic aspirations - of course it's a small, claustrophobic, 'domestic' drama with a tiny cast! What other kind of movie are you going to make in Turkey? A blockbuster sci-fi epic? You could of course argue that the director makes a virtue of necessity, but the film is just not that virtuous, sorry.
Watching the commentary for Vampyr, Guillermo del Toro quotes Magritte as saying that the purpose of art is to put us in touch with the mysterious. Perhaps Climates's problem is that it settles for just plain inscrutable.
Note: There is a rather dramatic, violent and uncomfortable love-scene, if one can call it that, that is very well realised. So it's a good reference for that kind of thing if you're looking for it.
Extra Note: This is my second big Turkish disappointment, the first being Orhan Pamuk's zzz-fest Snow.
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