Yozgat Blues

Mahmut Fazil Coskun’s Yozgat Blues is about a paradox — a singer who can’t express his emotions. Ercan Kesal (actually a physician, not an actor) stars as Yavuz, an aging performer of French chansons who is drawn to his new backup singer, Nese (stage actress Acya Damgaci), but fails to express himself. She even has to suggest he take her as a vocalist.

A generous man, Yavuz takes her to the unromantic remote city Yozgat to help out an old friend only to find he’s not getting paid and even has to pick up the hotel tab. That's how all the music turns into the blues. He continues to perform for free, even sells his instrument and car, in order to keep working with Nese. But she accepts the proposal of another lonely soul, Yavuz's barber Sabri (Tansu Bicer) whom she advises on setting up his own hairdressing salon. The barber is sensitive to her needs, advising her on her hair and skin problems. Yavuz can only say “Red is a good colour for the stage,” not “Red is a good colour on you.” Sabri lives with his granny but is actively trying to find a life mate.

Nese also proves a muse for the married radio poet, who more openly promotes her. When she sings with Yavuz, she’s in the foreground but he commands the sharp focus.  Singing with the poet she’s again in the foreground but now she has the sharp focus. The parallel contrasts the men’s respective attitudes toward her. 

Yavuz’s one French song is about the Indian Summer of life, the last fading spirit and energy. He shows no emotion at his father’s death, which opens the film, but he uses that death to cover his grief at losing Nese at the end.That loss forces him into an emotional experience he has thus far avoided in life. In the last shot Yavuz is still too frozen to respond to the call for passengers to Istanbul. That same ambiguity — Will he go on or give up? — reflects in his abandonment of his wig.

The woman has an openness to new experience and a vitality that both her suitors lack and a freedom from the radio poet’s pretentiousness. Far from the standard film beauty, Nese has a winning love of life, seen in her comfort at the grandmother’s dinner. She is free from the insularity that characterizes all three men — and the bride and groom in the backseat, who stare stolidly away from each other. The film may also impute an insularity to contemporary Turkey, as the audiences reject the European songs for the traditional Turkish duo who supplant the central characters -- and get paid.

This is a film of small touches, celebrating the emotions amid mundanity. None of the characters is conventionally attractive or especially talented and there are no points of high drama. Instead we get the sense of emotions being either fearfully suppressed or tentatively allowed emergence.