The Secret Face

A woman goes through a photographer's archive. There are thousands of pictures of faces and she is looking for one in particular. She cannot say exactly what she is looking for; she only knows she will recognise it when she finds it. The photographer becomes interested in her. Then she disappears. He sets out to find her, leaves Istanbul and goes to a town in Anatolia. He stays at a hotel there and the search turns into something else: whom he is looking for grows uncertain and the people in the town tell him their own stories. Ömer Kavur directs. The screenplay is by Orhan Pamuk. Zuhal Olcay and Fikret Kuşkan take the leads. The text was developed from a section of Pamuk's own novel and the writer wrote the screenplay directly for the cinema. What the narrative builds is the idea of searching; what is being sought never becomes clear and the film refuses to answer it. Kavur's films of this period were built on identity and disappearance, and this is among the clearest examples of that line. The hotel and town scenes are the centre; the setting is built realistically while the time is left uncertain. The photography rests on darkness and narrow frames; through the film the faces are mostly half in shadow. Its limits are pace and closedness; the narrative is deliberately unresolved and stays inconclusive for some viewers. Who it is for: anyone curious about Turkish art cinema, Kavur, and Pamuk's writing. Who it is not for: it is very slow, the narrative explains nothing, and the ending is uncertain.