Filmmakers Maryna Er Gorbach and Mehmet Bahadi Er's bluntly realistic and surprisingly unsentimental “lost in translation” love story centers on two randomly intersecting malcontents from clashing ethnic backgrounds—desperate characters both, who are languishing in similar existential purgatories. Cemal (Ushan Çakir) is a ruggedly handsome Turkish twentysomething slated for a traditional marriage arranged by his family, but for now his devious uncle has convinced him to cross into neighboring Ukraine for one last bachelor sex-capade. We're also introduced to icy Ukrainian beauty Sasha (Victoria Spesyvtseva), a successful model and one of the few “haves” in a post-Communist wasteland of mostly have nots. In a brief series of deftly shot scenes, viewers learn that Sasha's penthouse life is no bowl of cherries: she's in a relationship with a married man, and is determined to get pregnant (but not by her current paramour). Sasha's so driven, in fact, that she ventures into Kiev's meat-market club scene dead set on having a contraception-free one-night stand. And she randomly chooses Cemal to be her inseminating dupe. Despite the language barrier, Sasha and Cemal eventually find themselves falling into a strange, intuitive kind of love, but their sordid urban adventures collide with some hard-knock underlying truths about ethnic prejudice and social inequality in Eastern Europe, which threaten to snuff out their relationship before it can really begin. Highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)
Love Me
Film Movement, 90 min., in Ukrainian, Turkish & English w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $24.95, Feb. 24 Volume 30, Issue 3
Love Me
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