Yumurta means ‘Egg’ and is the first in Semih Kaplanoglu’s Honey, Milk, and Egg trilogy. I saw the middle film, Süt (Milk), at the Toronto film festival last September and liked it very much. Kaplanoglu is going through this trilogy about poet Yusuf in reverse. Yumurta tells Yusuf’s story as he is approaching middle age, while Süt focuses on his adolescence. I can only imagine that his ‘Honey’ film will show Yusuf as a little boy. The two films so far make a big deal that Yusuf is a poet, in the sense that characters frequently ask about his poetry and the accolades he received when he was younger, but it really has nothing to do with any ideas in either film, which focus more on broader life experiences that one can experience in the respective stages of life. In Yumurta, the plot is centered around Yusuf’s return to his home town for his mother’s funeral (having seen Süt first, I was bummed to learn that his mother passed between the two films, she seemed nice, and young at heart). Both films in the trilogy so far are similarly paced, shot, and acted, and could easily connect to form a single, three-hour film. This film is less surreal than Süt, though; something that I think Kaplanoglu does well and am glad that he is developing in this trilogy. He is also taking more risks in the middle film, ending it with an inversion of Syndromes and a Century‘s ominous black hole. The glaring white light seemed to propel Yusuf through time to approach the future world of Yumurta (or is it the past world, since this one came first?).
The acting is pretty standard. Nothing great and nothing offensive. If it weren’t for a few abstract bits, liking the opening shot of Yusuf’s mother wandering through a foggy field, or Yusuf waking up near a fantasy forest, I think that the film would have not had anything to say. There are pretty cliche metaphors here (the egg the most obvious one as Yusuf mourns the one who hatched him) and trite contemplations of a middle-aged man observing a young couple in the peak of their lives. I take back what I said about the acting being standard, too. The dog at the end of the film displays the worst dog acting I have seen (granted I haven’t seen the superhero dog movie that came out last year). The film is pretty, though, and the pacing is very nice. Nothing offensive, either. I’m just glad that Kaplanoglu is showing some ambition with this project, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how he ties up the beginning of the story.