How to Save Asiye

Atıf Yılmaz's 1986 film is adapted from Vasıf Öngören's play of the same name. The head of an association against prostitution receives a letter from a woman called Asiye asking to be saved, and visits the brothel to rescue her; instead of the scene she expects, she finds herself in the middle of a musical show. The narrative inverts the idea of rescue. Asiye's story is played out more than once by different narrators, and each time the question of whose fault it was changes. The viewer cannot settle who is saving whom on that stage. Müjde Ar plays Asiye, with Ali Poyrazoğlu and Hümeyra in the cast. Yılmaz keeps the play's stage structure and places the songs inside the narrative. It belongs to the strain of woman-centred films that grew in Turkish cinema during the eighties. Who it's for: those who follow the Turkish cinema of the eighties and theatrical adaptation. Who it's not for: viewers expecting realism; the film keeps reminding you of its own artifice.