WHAT A PAIR

AAAHH BELINDA!.. , 1986
Turkiye | 35mm, Colour, 100’ | Turkish
Director: Atıf Yılmaz
Cast: Müjde Ar,Macit Koper, Yılmaz Zafer, Güzin Özipek, Füsün Demirel

DAYDREAMS OF MISS CAZIBE (CAZİBE HANIMIN GÜNDÜZ DÜŞLERİ), 1992
Turkiye | 35mm, Colour, 105’ | Turkish
Director: İrfan Tözüm
Cast: Hale Soygazi, Uğur Polat, Macit Koper, Suna Selen, Halil Ergün, Nüvit Özdoğru

Both Aaahh Belinda and Cazibe Hanım’ın Gündüz Düşleri would be one of the few films that can pass Yeşilçam’s test with fantasy. The main theme of both films is looking for variety while feeling suffocated by the flow of an ordinary life and getting scared and running away from it once finding it. Miss Cazibe feels like she is trapped. She is bored by her old mother whom she has to take care of. Her uncle who fancies her is just a beacon of indiscretion. Meanwhile, Miss Cazibe fantasises about having an escapade with Kürşat whom she couldn’t forget since her high school years, but Kürşat didactically reminds her that she should go after her dreams all the way otherwise she will lose the lover she created in her fantasies. In Aaahh Belinda the idea of identifying with Naciye–the housewife she has to play in a shampoo commercial–repulses Serap. She wants to stay away from (as the popular description of the time goes) “feudal relations”, the small lives of traditional families, neighbour relations, provinciality, all of which she always remained distant to, scared of losing her edge. As if all this wasn’t enough, her leftist friends accuse her of selling out for acting in a commercial. In both cases social realism and fantasy are entwined. When she meets with the “real” Kürşat and sleeps with him, Cazibe’s fantasies of many years go short-circuit. Serap escapes the world of shampoo commercial she was trapped in à la Twilight Zone and finds work at her old theatre, but her grandmother raids the theatre building saying “We’re not going to learn how to enter a theatre from you!” as if referencing today. Going in and out of the fantasy world enables the films to clearly underline the disengagement from societal reality. Still, these two extraordinary films, if nothing else, extensively bring into question whether Turkish cinema is at peace with the fantasy genre or not. -Selim Eyüboğlu