''Climates'' () is a 2006 Turkish drama film directed by

Nuri Bilge Ceylan Nuri Bilge Ceylan (; born 26 January 1959) is a Turkish director, screenwriter, photographer and actor. His film ''Winter Sleep (film), Winter Sleep'' (2014) won the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, 67th Cannes Film Festival, while s ...

. The film charts the deteriorating relationship between a professional

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

couple, İsa and Bahar, played by Ceylan and his wife

Ebru Ceylan Ebru Ceylan (, born 26 January 1976) is a Turkish photographer, actress, screenwriter and art director. She is married to collaborator Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Biography Ebru Yapıcı was born in Ankara and studied film and television at Marmara Uni ...

. It was Ceylan's first film shot on

High-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ( ...

. The title of the film comes from

André Maurois André Maurois (; born Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog; 26 July 1885 – 9 October 1967) was a French author. Biography Maurois was born on 26 July 1885 in Elbeuf and educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen, both in Normandy. A member of ...

's novel ''Climats''.

Plot

The film starts on a summer holiday in

Kaş Kaş () is a small fishing, diving, yachting and tourist town, and a municipality and Districts of Turkey, district of Antalya Province, Turkey. Its area is 1,750 km2, and its population is 62,866 (2022). It is 168 km west of the city ...

, where the couple are barely talking. İsa is taking pictures of ancient monuments for a perpetually unfinished thesis for the university class he teaches; Bahar watches. At the beach she falls asleep and dreams that he is smothering her in sand. After rehearsing his speech while Bahar is swimming, Isa tells her that he wants to break up. While riding back to the city on a motorbike she suddenly covers his eyes with her hands, which causes the bike to crash, although both of them avoid serious injury. The couple go their separate ways and Bahar tells him not to call. As fall follows summer, back in

, İsa makes contact again with a woman, Serap, with whom he cheated on Bahar before and who is in a relationship with an acquaintance of his. Winter arrives and İsa dreams of a holiday in the sun, but instead flies to

Ağrı Ağrı (; ) is a city in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran. It is the seat of Ağrı Province and Ağrı District.

, the snowy eastern province of

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, where Bahar is working as an art director filming a TV series on location. He tries to win her back, but she rejects his advances. Later, she comes to his hotel room and stays overnight, but in the morning he flies off alone.

Cast

* Ebru Ceylan as Bahar * Nuri Bilge Ceylan as İsa * Nazan Kırılmış as Serap * Mehmet Eryılmaz as Mehmet * Arif Aşçı as Arif * Can Özbatur as Güven

Technique

The film features long takes of head shots, and poetic landscapes. The dialogue has long silences during which casual sounds are highlighted, such as the sound of a woman drawing on a cigarette.

Reception

''Climates'' has received positive reviews from critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film has a rating of 73%, based on 66 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Aesthetically sound and solidly acted, but will nonetheless ring hollow for some viewers." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film was nominated for the

Golden Palm The (; ) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festiv ...

at the

2006 Cannes Film Festival The 59th Cannes Film Festival was held from 17 to 28 May 2006. Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai served as jury president for the main competition, the first Chinese to preside over the jury. English filmmaker Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or for th ...

, and won the

FIPRESCI The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for ''Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique'') is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the wor ...

Award there. Critic Michael Phillips named ''Climates'' the best film of 2006 and, later, the third greatest movie of the decade.Seidman, Rober
Best of the Decade Films revealed on "At The Movies"
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References

External links

Official website
*
Web site with trailer
{{Nuri Bilge Ceylan 2006 drama films 2006 films Films directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Films set in Turkey 2000s Turkish-language films Turkish drama films Films set on beaches