Recep Ivedik 2 - Review

Directory of World Cinema

them). Recep is also very inventive with language. He can speak, even sing, in different Anatolian dialects. He has folk-tale character attributes like Kelog˘lan. He also continually makes popular-culture references to Turkish pop music. Recep I˙vedik can appeal to rich and poor, old and young, uneducated and the elite at the same time. In fact, this quality – its ability to reach across all class, gender and cultural background – gave it the right to claim the title of ‘the best film to cut across all audience segments at the box office’ in Turkish cinema.

Murat Akser

Recep I˙vedik 2 Recep I˙vedik 2 Studio:

Aksoy Film Özen Film Director:

Togan Gökbakar Producers:

Faruk Aksoy Mehmet E. Soyarslan Screenwriters:

Togan Gökbakar S¸ahan Gökbakar Serkan Altunig˘ne Cinematographer:

Ertunç S¸enkay Editor:

Erkan Özekan Music:

Og˘uz Kaplangı Duration:

110 Minutes Cast:

S¸ahan Gökbakar Gülsen Özbakan Efe Babacan Çag˘rı Büyüksayar Zeynep Çamcı Asiye Dinçsoy Year:

Synopsis Recep is in his home neighbourhood in Güngören, I˙stanbul, where he visits his grandmother. His grandmother is an energetic and lively woman. She complains about Recep’s idle ways. Grandmother orders Recep to find a job, get married, get a good reputation and be a good man. Recep starts looking for a job. First he becomes a pizza delivery man but he gets fired for eating half of the orders. Then he becomes a cashier in a supermarket. He gets fired again for ordering the customers around. Next, he works in a pharmacy and then becomes an air steward. He is fired 17 times in 20 days. He discovers that his cousin Hakan runs an ad agency created by his grandfather. He goes to the ad agency to claim his senior-partner position. After he has made several embarrassing scenes at the office he gets acquainted with the employees. To achieve his second goal, he befriends an internet junkie and finds about dating sites. He creates a dating profile and has his first date at a Starbucks. He mistakes another girl for his date and gets pepper-sprayed. On the business front, he decides to represent the agency in a deal with a Japanese company. He comes to the meeting with a kimono that has a yakuza symbol on and manages to deal. Even though all goes well for him on the job front, he cannot find love. Yet, in order to fulfil the promise he gave to his grandmother on her death bed, he takes one of the interns who works for him and presents her as his girlfriend. At the end of the film we see Recep sitting alone crying next to his grandmother’s coffin.

Critique The sequel to the incredibly successful Recep I˙vedik comes with a bigger budget and a more developed story. We get to see Recep (S¸ahan Gökbakar) in his own neighbourhood, where he is everybody’s best friend. In the film, Recep’s characters and actions are criticized by his grandmother, who represents authority and provides social criticism. He faces the challenging task faced by young men in the big city: finding a job. As Recep puts it, ‘this is the problem of 18 million unemployed youths’. In line with this, the film makes fun of business practices and capitalist ideology, particularly through Recep’s jokes. Recep’s success as a newcomer to an old

2009 Blockbusters in Turkish Cinema 135

Directory of World Cinema

Recep I˙vedik 2

urban company is a commentary on new Anatolian capital coming to old city businesses and reshaping it. This is highlighted with the way in which he thinks about coffee: to him drinking foreign coffee at the heart of a coffee-producing country is too alien. His ways of trying to deal with the most exotic and alien practices range from yoga, golf and costume parties to his inability to eat sushi and caviar. Overall, the film offers an interesting and thought-provoking representation of ‘Turkish-ness’ in the face of both capitalism and eastern technocracy. It critiques the dispassionate capitalist ideology through comedic ploys, and by presenting us with a character, who, with his warmth, captures the hearts of audiences.

Murat Akser

The Hunting Season Av Mevsimi

Studio:

Fida Film Warner Bros Director:

Yavuz Turgul

136  Turkey

Synopsis A severed hand is found in a river. Forensics finds that it is that of a teenage girl and they identify a fingerprint. A homicide detective, Ferman, takes on his final case of a murdered girl with his assistant I˙dris and a new recruit fresh out of college, Hasan. During their investigation they identify the girl through her criminal record. They locate her drug-addict boyfriend, acid Ömer, who denies the crime, in a night club. The girl, Pamuk, was living with Battal Çolakzade, a wealthy industrialist, as a teen bride. During another interview, Ömer decides to confess that it was one of Pamuk’s brothers who killed her. I˙dris decides to sneak into Battal’s mansion to gather evidence, but is shot by a security guard. Before he dies, he points to a clue to be seen in the surveillance footage. At the end of the film Battal admits to the murder of Pamuk, who was sacrificed as an organ donor to save his sick daughter, and commits suicide.