Vasfiye Is Her Name

A screenwriter short of ideas is looking at a poster for a nightclub singer called Sevim Suna when a man appears beside him, takes him to a tavern and starts telling him about her. Then a second man arrives, then a third, then a fourth. All of them describe the same woman, all of them describe a different woman, and only in pieces do we learn her real name is Vasfiye. Atif Yilmaz adapted stories by Necati Cumali and tied the structure directly to the problem of who narrates: she never speaks for herself in any section, because a man is always telling it. Mujde Ar plays four separate Vasfiyes as imagined by four separate men. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties Turkish cinema and formal experiments about how women are narrated. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a straight story, since this is contradictory by design.