The Shadow Play

Abidin and Mahmut have been performing at the same nightclub for years. They do a comedy act called the Karabiberler and nobody laughs. Abidin is a womaniser, selfish and talkative; Mahmut is quiet and shy. One night they take home a woman who was brought to the club as a hostess and thrown out as useless. Kumru is deaf and cannot speak. The subject is not friendship but two men having to look at someone other than themselves for the first time. Kumru does not talk, and precisely because of that each of them tells her whatever they like; she becomes not a listener but a mirror. The form starts in realism and drifts into fable. The club, Istanbul at night and cheap stage light build a known world; then the film steps outside it into a fantastical register. That transition was unusual in Turkish cinema at the time. The production belongs to Yavuz Turgul's period before Eşkıya, and his method of using melodrama and humour together is already established here. It competed for best film at the Antalya Golden Orange festival in 1993. Şener Şen plays Abidin and Şevket Altuğ plays Mahmut, with Larissa Litichevskaya as Kumru. Who it is for: viewers who like Yavuz Turgul's cinema and Şener Şen. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a consistent tone; the film moves between realism and fable and some viewers find the shift abrupt.