THE STORY – Derya and Aziz, a celebrated artist couple from Ankara, lead a fulfilling life with their 13-year-old daughter Ezgi – until an incident at the premiere of their new play changes everything. Overnight, they find themselves targeted by the state and lose their jobs and their home.
THE CAST – Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas & İpek Bilgin
THE TEAM – İlker Çatak (Director/Writer), Ayda Meryem Çatak & Enis Köstepen (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 128 Minutes
Here in our increasingly less-United States of America, it’s become something of a joke (or half-joke, depending on how closely you follow the news) to talk about getting in trouble for having an unfavorable opinion of our government. Most of us have jested about the FBI listening to us through our devices or monitoring our social media. “Yellow Letters,” the latest film from director İlker Çatak, explores a world where this is very much a real possibility. Çatak lays out a critique of state censorship of private citizens in modern-day Turkey, grounded in a brilliant fourth-wall-breaking concept. Its innovative storytelling method is excitingly deployed and adds commentary to the film’s already pointed critiques. Still, the actual story is told in a way that limits tension and blunts the film’s overall impact.
The film centers around a power couple in Ankara’s theatre scene: Derya (Özgü Namal) and Aziz (Tansu Biçer). The former is a successful and talented actress, and the latter writes and directs plays in addition to teaching at a university. After the premiere of their latest theatre piece, they suddenly find their jobs stripped from them because of claims from the government that they made “statements that attack personal rights.” But Aziz and Derya know the score: they’re being targeted because of their criticisms of the President and his government’s actions, both to Aziz’s students and on Derya’s socials. With Aziz facing serious criminal charges, they and their teenage daughter, Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas), move to Istanbul and try their best to maintain their artistic spirit amid severe pushback from powerful forces.
Early in the film, a bold red title card flashes across the screen: “Berlin as Ankara.” Later, a similar on-screen text reads “Hamburg as Istanbul.” With this, Çatak strips away the fictionality of his story to reveal the cities that will stand in for the Turkish locations where the story takes place. This technique lets the audience in on the film’s falsity, essentially turning it into a parable that serves as a warning to everyday citizens about the lengths to which those at the top will go to maintain their grip on power. It’s a brilliant, almost Brechtian storytelling angle that also feels true to the artistic spirit of the film’s characters; it’s a meta device that one of their plays might believably deploy.
Unfortunately, this represents the most (and perhaps only) unexpected choice on Çatak’s part. The film’s setup is undeniably engrossing, with the swiftness of Derya and Aziz’s suspension feeling shocking to both viewers and the couple. But once they relocate to Istanbul, the energy evaporates. Until the final sequence, much of the film consists of scenes of the couple struggling and fighting, but in a way that doesn’t feel compelling. It doesn’t help that the couple’s actual actions, which the government considers offensive, are only minimally shown (outside of a striking, if heavy-handed, snippet of one of their plays), making it hard to feel emboldened by their noble critical acts when we mostly have to take their word for it. This may be intentional, suggesting that the government’s censorship is rash and completely irrational (as if there were such a thing as rational censorship). Still, this dilution of context doesn’t make for the most captivating movie.
Thankfully, the two central performances are excellent, giving viewers something to hang on to when the screenplay lets them down. Tansu Biçer emphasizes just how exhausting this absurd situation is with a performance that mostly avoids histrionics, while remaining watchable through his presence. And Özgü Namal is fantastic as Derya, representing the more passionate half of the couple. She has a very focused energy, and her character expertly knows how to use her emotions with precision. In one scene, we see her essentially reset herself after a family argument by adjusting her body, stretching her jaw, and instantly adopting a cheerful tone of voice, as if she were preparing to go onstage and perform a mindset different from her real one.
Çatak welcomes viewers into his worldview but doesn’t take the necessary steps required to craft a worthwhile screen story, despite the very worthy perspective he shows through his film. “Yellow Letters” is shockingly low-energy, despite the urgency of the situation the characters find themselves in. A film like this should strive to make the somewhat abstract yet frightening central threat feel even more real by showing how it can affect individuals, even if they’re fictional. But instead, it struggles to make itself as infuriatingly compelling as any nonfiction news story about censorship.
