Kuma | Review

Two’s Company: Dag’s Extraordinary Debut Perversely Compelling

Like Feo Aladag’s 2010 harrowing debut, When We Leave, Austrian-Kurdish director Umat Dag’s first film, Kuma, examines the strict traditions and cultural values of a Turkish immigrant community for a compelling story with an expertly scripted scenario and excellent lead performances. Every family has secrets, and there’s a doozy at the center of one immigrant family’s nuclear dynamic that’s rather insidiously revealed to us. And once that hooks us in, we slowly begin to learn others. An excellent portrait of the family as the ultimate microcosm of crippling dysfunction by way of its particular set of mores and traditions, this is a beautifully rendered portrait of profound repression.

Nineteen year-old Ayse (Begum Akkaya), a Turkish peasant girl, has just been married to the handsome young Hasan (Murathan Muslu), and is all set to be whisked off to live with his family in Vienna. Her family seems to sense some trepidation from her, and the night she arrives in her new home, her mother consoles her on the phone about not marrying the man of her choosing, telling her “you can just close your eyes,” and pretend he’s someone else. But, oh boy, mom doesn’t even know the half of it. Hasan trots off to his own bedroom, and we quickly realize that the wedding was a sham; she’s actually been secretly married as a kuma (a second wife) to Hasan’s father, Mustafa (Vedat Erincin). It turns out that Hasan’s mother, the sickly looking Fatma (Nihal G. Koldas) is undergoing chemotherapy and soon, a risky operation as well. Ayse will be on hand to take over as matriarch and care for Mustafa and the two children living at home upon Fatma’s fast approaching death. Things are going swimmingly, and Ayse even gets pregnant with Mustafa’s child. Who could want for more?

While everyone is intent on keeping Ayse’s true relationship to the family a secret, not all are entirely pleased about it, particularly Fatma’s eldest daughter, who has just started her own family and is often physically abused by her husband. Suffering the slings and arrows of a Cinderella archetype, Ayse’s motivations for accepting the arrangement are unclear, though it’s obvious that she does have considerable attraction to Hasan, who is forced to reveal an incendiary secret of his own to Ayse. But about half way through the film, a strange twist occurs, which suddenly finds the family in a completely awkward position they most certainly couldn’t have predicted. As they try to navigate around this scenario, tensions mount, exploding in an angry climax of violent emotion.

Most of the scenery in Kuma is flat, filmed in cramped, closed off spaces. Much of the success of the film lies on the central performance of newcomer Begum Akkaya, and there are an abundance of tight close-ups on her face, and we watch her wide, open expressions become more shrouded and unhappy. The relationship she develops with Fatma is endlessly intriguing, and actress Nihal Koldas proves to be an equally impressive screen presence come the final frames.

Umat Dag catches superbly a clash of cultures, both geographically and generationally. Fatma and Mustafa’s Westernized children are incredulous at the presence of Ayse, who they treat like village idiot for her naïve ways. Like a recent examination of similar traditions in other modern, rigid cultures, such as Brilliante Mendoza’s Thy Womb, where a second wife is sought after the first is revealed to be sterile, or Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void, where a younger sister must marry her brother-in-law after her older sister unexpectedly passes, there’s an unmitigated trauma to the emotional lives of these people forced to be objected to these rigid, archaic notions of marriage (and life, for that matter). Obviously, these stories make for compelling cinema, and Umat Dag can count his quietly unassuming debut as an exquisite example of this. Perversely engaging, Kuma is one of those delightful films that draws you in and fascinates, while showcasing an excellent find in Akkaya.

Reviewed on April 11 at the 2013 Disappearing Act European Film Festival.