By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Őzcan Alper
Starring: Megi Kobaladze | Nino Lejava | Onur Saylak | Raife Yenigül | Serkan Keskin
Original language title: Sonbahar
Country: germany, turkey
Year: 2009
Running time: 99
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1330591/
Bruce says: “Yusuf is one of the Hamshen Armenians of northeastern Turkey, many of whom converted to Islam to avoid being eradicated during the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that took the lives of hundreds of thousands. Yusuf is a handsome young man who has spent ten years in jail for his leftist political views, typical of many in Turkey who lived through the 90’s dreaming of social change. As we see him, once again a free man, he is now a man composing his own requiem, a memorial to a generation of lost ideals. Yusuf still clings to his beliefs in socialism even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the bus he travels back to his small village and to his mother’s cabin high in the mountains. Yusuf has a nagging cough which presages an early demise.
“His mother is happy to see him for she did not think Yusuf would return before she died. The first few days are lazy due to the fact that Yusuf’s cough keeps him awake at night and he cat naps during the day. When he walks to the village he sees Eka (Megi Kobaladze), an attractive woman buying a Russian novel in one of the stores. Eventually he meets her in a bar and learns she is a Russian prostitute who has come to Turkey to earn money to support her four year old child. There are no jobs in Russia and many people are falling below the poverty line. The two begin a relationship that quickly goes beyond the boundaries of service provider and client. How ironic that Yusuf’s first affair would be the victim of a society whose values he was imprisoned for trying to uphold.
“Long on mood and intellectual musings, AUTUMN is decidedly short of plot. Yususf spends a weekend with his friend Mikail at a remote mountain cabin where Mikail confesses that he was madly in love with his wife when they married but now he doesn’t want to go home anymore in spite of having children. Other friends refer to Yusuf’s missing years as when he was ‘mixed up in all that anarchist business,’ ignoring the fact that ideals had anything to do with Yusuf’s history. Eventually Yusuf learns that his girlfriend at the time of his imprisonment has married and is raising a family. All these interactions make Yusuf more withdrawn and resigned to a futility of purpose. AUTUMN has many similarities with the recent PANDORA’S BOX, a film that contrasts simple village living with an outside world that has left such rustic memories behind. 3 1/2 cats
“(AUTUMN was screened as part of the New Directors/New Films festival sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.)“