In narrative constructs, intense emotions, especially romantic ones, tend to be associated with high temperatures. It’s as if the feverous feeling escaped the body into the atmosphere. Or, maybe it’s the other way around, hearts and libidos inspired by the surrounding heat to burn hotter than ever. And yet, there’s something deceptively powerful about the flame of attraction sparking alive within the bitter cold. In those cases, one almost desires human connection as a physical need. The body calls for the warmth of another person. The mind yearns for companionship, a panacea to the frozen solitude of every day.
At this year’s TIFF, two films explore this dynamic, allowing the frigid climate to become as strong a force as human arrogance or the heart’s most ardent desires. In both examples, a love triangle emerges from the snow. They’re Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses and Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice…
ABOUT DRY GRASSES, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
If there’s anything Nuri Bilge Ceylan loves, it’s the self-destructive tendencies of egotist male intellectuals. Studying such characters has defined the Turkish auteur’s career, from his first Cannes victory to his latest success, the Best Actress-winning About Dry Grasses. Not that Samet, the insufferable fellow at the center of this latest exercise, is like the 21st-century aristocrat of Winter Sleep. They both live in wintery Anatolia, but that’s about it. For starters, he’s got no luxurious place to spend his time, finding himself low on funds and denied prestige, a lowly pedagogue feeling increasingly trapped in the rural community where he teaches.
Only one bright student, Sevim, makes this existence tolerable, and even that turns to dust when the girl accuses her favorite teacher of inappropriate behavior. That event propels Samet down a road of existential crisis, unpeeling the layers of civility hiding a vicious man whose keen intellect is weapon-like, always ready to be deployed in defense or cruel amusement. This is apparent in the professional and personal spheres, as the school drama is counterpointed by a thorny triangle between Samet, his PE teacher roommate, and a colleague from another school, left with one less leg after a violent incident in her past.
Though tonally distinct, the two narrative lines intertwine with the purpose of exposing Samet’s essential selfishness, weaving an ugly portrait complete with emphatic voice-over narration and a meta-cinematic rupture that recalls the odd humor in Ceylan’s earlier features. Indeed, much of About Dry Grasses feels like a direct companion to the director’s first efforts, stepping back from the grand poetic scope of his recent oeuvre. Still, the running time is that of an epic, and the pace glacial in a way that feels more like a commonplace festival film affectation than a fully motivated choice.
At the end of all things, this is a conversation piece about flawed people collapsing into themselves, their anguish exteriorized in writerly dialogue – text and acting put above fellow filmic elements. Though too long for its own good, About Dry Grasses gets by on these triumphs, each performer bringing a different quality to the screen, a different piece in a mosaic of complicated interiorities. Deniz Celiloğlu aces the lead role, while Merve Dizdar and young Ece Bağcı shine from the margins. The first actress resolves a challenging part that only comes into its own by the final act and an extended dialogue. At the same time, the juvenile thespian delivers a tour-de-force coming to its full power for the picture’s haunting last shot.
THE BREAKING ICE, Anthony Chen
It starts with the act of breaking ice, cutting the river’s frozen surface into blocks, while a twinkling score suggests fireflies bobbing lovely up to the open sky. This frigid place, where the land’s hostility defines people’s lives and labor, is Yanji, a Chinese city on the northern border next to the Korean frontier. Perpetually shrouded in white snow, desolation reigns supreme, and few can escape the ennui permeating the air. Haofeng, visiting from Shanghai for a wedding, finds his marrow-deep loneliness expanded through wide expanses of nothing but cold, while tour guide Nana and her friend Xiao suffer similar insouciance, dissatisfied with life but stuck in a limbo, paralyzed in place.
We watch them wander, alone together, through sad-looking vistas, still picturesque enough to be printed on postcards. The transient properties of a tourist town are in full effect, a commodified town full of people in recess from their lives. In other words, it’s the perfect scenario to observe beautiful people looking pensively into the distance, their hearts missing something they’ve never had. Not that our trio is especially delicate in their sorrow. They can be as brisk as the winter wind. But they can also be tender, drowsily settling into the comfort of company, strumming the guitar while hangovers ferment inside them.
The Breaking Ice is surprisingly warm, all things considered, invested in the capture of inchoate emotion precipitated by a tantamount love for its characters. It’s like a snoozy version of a lost Nouvelle Vague classic, relocated from Paris to an ice-laced China. Jing-Pin Yu’s cinematography is a miracle, reaching its highest peak when our trio of would-be lovers ventures into an ice maze that seems to glow from within. As for the soundscape, it’s even better than the sights, honing on a shimmering aural quality that sustains the picture’s realistic aesthetic but leaves space for notes of abstraction, inchoate melancholy.
When it ends, and everyone goes their way as it must be, we’re left with the sureness that, while still alone, each of the three loving vectors changed somehow. The warmth of connection, even if brief, is enough to unthaw the soul. That it does all this without capitulating to cheap sentiment is a magic trick worthy of the greatest tricksters out there, Anthony Chen a master in the making. Not everything works smoothly, however, with the appeal to folkloric lessons prompting an unfortunate CGI apparition. There’s also a curious thieving storyline, but isn’t that just another soul wanting to be freed? Loneliness is a prison that we all yearn to escape - or accept.
About Dry Grasses will represent Turkey at the Oscars, but The Breaking Ice is still searching for international distribution. Check it out when you can, for it’s an icy kiss that leaves a ghost of warmth behind.