Feeling constricted in her family house where life is defined by strict rules of conduct imposed by her dominant, tough-as-nails mother, Gülizar (Ecem Uzun) can’t wait to depart to Kosovo to wed Emre (Bekir Behrem) in an arranged marriage she puts high hopes in. She isn’t naive to believe that this new chapter of her life will be all milk and honey, but it’s a fresh start offering her the possibility to explore her own expectations and maybe find happiness.
Gülizar is screening at Toronto International Film Festival
In her debut feature named by the lead character, Belkis Bayrak delivers what most auteurs who seek to catch the female gaze fail to do: observe, listen and expose the complexity of a trauma that marks a woman’s life in a way that is difficult to grasp, almost always conditioned by the societal norms. She is navigating the viewer through a maze of emotions by building an intimate relationship with Gülizar through the long static and semi-static shots handled by cinematographer Kürşat Üresin who stays close to her for most of the film’s 84 minutes of runtime. It is a successful case study of a sexual assault with a tragic outcome, less of a physical than psychological nature. Uzun is brilliant in portraying a woman who can not cope with what she experienced because she doesn’t have one single person of confidence to speak to. She is in a new environment, surrounded by people she meets for the first time, and it doesn’t make a difference that her mother-in-law (Aslı İçözü) offers a keen ear and willingness to stand her side.
Getting ready for the big day routinely in Turkey, Gülizar barely shows any emotion, and she walks around almost like in a trance, keeping her thoughts to herself. As the day of departure approaches, she barely utters a word, but the moment she boards the bus to Kosovo with her mother, the reluctance to get there and get over with, sets in. The problem arises when her mother doesn’t pass passport control since her travelling document is about to expire. She is pulled off the bus, but when she demands that Gülizar join her, she refuses saying that they will meet in Kosovo in a couple of days. “Do not go alone to the restrooms, take care of yourself” is the last thing she gets to hear from her mother, who maybe might be on the despotic side, but who certainly knows what she is talking about. On one of the restroom breaks, Gülizar will find out what she was warned about, in the hardest possible way.
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We do not get to see what happens, it is the sound department that does a good job of getting us close to the traumatic event. It’s the aftermath which sets the tone to the story: the fear and the sense of guilt that never leaves the victim, regardless of whys and hows.
Bayrak manages to go to the core of women’s silence when it comes to sexual assault. How do you break it to the world? Are you ready to do it at all? The male compulsion to play the protector, the avenger and the problem-solver sometimes clashes with what a woman needs to get as support. Emre is precisely the type of man who doesn’t get that silence is not a betrayal, but a defense system. He interprets Gülizar’s stiffness during the wedding night, and her wish to forget it all as a threat to their marriage and not a warning that she is not doing well.
On the other hand, Emre is not portrayed as an alpha male who protects the right to his spouse’s vagina to pound his chest and scream “Me Tarzan, you Jane”. He is genuinely worried about Gülizar’s well-being, frustrated by her silence and his powerlessness, ready to admit to his wrong-doings.
“Gülizar” is a character-driven drama that had its world premiere at TIFF, a warm, thorough study of a woman’s meltdown caused by the a terrible chain of events. The film is a Turkish-Kosovar co-production between Saba Film, Protim VP and Plan Bee Films
