Angel's Fall

Zeynep (Tuline Ozen) lives at home with her father. She works days as a chambermaid at a local hotel and at night lies awake fearing the sound of his tread. He's sexually abusive and unpredictably violent. At the hotel, another youngster Mustafa (Engin Dogan) clumsily takes an interest in her and the stirrings of a friendship begin.

But, boy oh boy, is this film slow. To the point of grass growing. You might conceivably nip out to the concessions stand, visit the loo and still come back to the same scene.

It's hard to be horrible when the performances are so good, but, really, this was so ponderous that there was an audible sound of shuffling from everyone in the room in lieu of a soundtrack. Slow builds are all right, if something important is being said. But here it is slow for slow's sake. The dialogue is brief and sporadic and there is, what I assume to be allegorical subplot, involving Zeynep spooling out a roll of cotton while trying to walk up a hill without it snapping.

This is a problem. On the one hand, we are being shown the ultra-realistic boredom and stress of Zeynep's life and, on the other, being treated to a lot of pretentious, arty thread-unwinding. The two aspects just don't gel and the film doesn't engage the audience enough to make you want to do the mental acrobatics to discover the "message".

Another major problem is an overblown sub-plot regarding the ownership of a suitcase full of sexy clothes and make-up. Ultimately, Zeynep ends up with it, sparking a sexual awakening which is all well and good. Before this point, however, we are invited to go into a lengthy sub-plot about the woman who originally owned the clothes which, annoyingly and unecessarily, is shown non-sequentially.

There is certainly a tension created and the camerawork is interesting but, surely, the most important thing in film is the story and this offers too little, too late.