Madame

Olcay Hanim lost her husband at sea when she was young and has lived alone ever since. She now has uterine cancer, and what frightens her is not her own death but a single question: who will take the cat, Hanim, once she is gone? Halit Refig builds the whole film on that question and refuses to inflate it. Yildiz Kenter plays it without any excess, and the film rests on her face. Underneath runs a second subject, the speed at which Istanbul and the habits of neighbourliness are changing, so that what she meets while looking for someone to take a cat is a city where nobody can promise anybody anything. Kenter was named best actress at Bastia in 1989 and Refig best director at Antalya.