Today, we are returning to the world of romance but with a twist of danger as we explore Turkish cinema for the first proper time on this site. Romance films can be so interesting because they can blend into and take on such a wide scope of different genres. In today’s film, we dive into the genre’s harder edge where danger lies in wait.
So, to set things up, Gökçe (Funda Eryigit) seemingly has it all. She is a successful publisher who knows how to pick good manuscripts which has made her husband Kenan (Mehmet Günsür) very rich indeed. But her life feels empty, it feels like something is missing or rather, many things are missing. However, when she gets sent a manuscript called Kül she’s instantly drawn into its words. Ensnared by its story, it awakens a happiness that she didn’t know was sleeping inside of her. And when she finds out that the bakery from the book is real and more of the book is real still well then she goes looking for the man.
While I did get frustrated with this film I have to say that the opening set-up had me fascinated. A novel with no author so beautiful that it turns your life upside down? What an amazing hook! The first act capitalises on this as we see Gökçe try and navigate this newfound existence and come to terms with her feelings about the book prior to finding out about its connection to reality, after too. This culminates in what I think might be one of my favourite shots from any movie ever, an afternoon setting where everything just looks perfect because hey why not use golden hour right?
However one of Ashes’ first big stumbles comes early on: there isn’t a single character here for us to latch onto who’s likeable throughout this whole thing. Now Saltburn showed us last week that you don’t always need this, it’s not impossible. But here? It’s hard to care about these people when their lives suck so much. Gökçe gets so wrapped up in the book she becomes blind to everything else around her Kenan is such a typical jilted spouse character, trying to sabotage his wife at every turn – even Metin (Alperen Duymaz) is pretty repugnant.
Then there’s the way that this story progresses which starts off well but soon loses its footing. At one point Gökçe invents some criticism for the manuscript within the film and I couldn’t help feeling like those words also applied to the movie itself. Things began to drag, moments of melodrama were punctuated by awkward sex scenes towards the end [SPOILERS] it can’t decide if it wants supernatural elements or not or if it wants religious concerns or not, indeed, most of all the ending just felt like cheating.
So do I recommend Ashes in the end? Sadly, no. Whilst it had a strong opening that never really felt like anything was made of and instead seemed fade out over time. If you liked this movie then we would recommend Bones and All.
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