Time to Love

Metin Erksan's film is among the strangest love stories in Turkish cinema. Halil, played by Müşfik Kenter, works as a house painter on an island and falls in love with a portrait of a woman hanging in one of the empty mansions they are painting. Every day he slips back into that room to look at it. Then Meral, the woman in the portrait, appears, and Halil rejects her. His reason is the entire idea of the film: he loves the painting, not the person, and to him the real thing is nothing but the spoiling of the image. A premise like that was close to unheard of in Turkish cinema at the time. The visual language departs from domestic production as well. The framing, the island locations and the tempo sit closer to European cinema, and to Italian films of the period in particular. Long silences and nearly motionless shots let the film work through looking rather than dialogue. It did not find a wide audience on release. Its standing was established by later generations, and it is now regarded as Erksan's most original work. Who it is for: viewers curious about the experimental strain in Turkish cinema and the tension between image and reality. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a brisk melodrama or a classic Yeşilçam narrative.