Honey
Melbourne International Film Festival, 07/08/2010
Status: Behind by 12 films
Honey is a really, really, really, really good-looking film. The Turkish highlands blue-steel the camera for the entire running time. It’s the third film in Turkish writer-director Semih Kaplanoglu’s trilogy about Yusuf. In the first, Egg, he is 35 years old, in the second, Milk, he’s 18ish and unable to get into college. In the third, Honey, he’s a boy, growing up in provincial Turkey with a plantation worker mother and an apiarist father, whom he adores.
The story of Honey is a slight one - the first half is centered on the relationship between the father and son, which unfolds through long, lingering (if beautifully shot) scenes of very little action. What little action there is dries up in the second half when the father disappears and the film focuses solely on the introverted, withdrawn Yusuf.
I usually don’t mind a film with a slow pace that takes it’s time with long shots and beautiful composition, like Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter … and Spring and The Weeping Camel, but those films also have a story. Like Zoolander lacked a brain, there’s little behind the eyes of this film, pretty to look at though it is.
