Istanbul Tales (2005)

With its lack of integrity and coherence; and an explicit inability to deepen the stories and bad acting except some actors, I think a user rating close to 8 is very very unrealistic. The director plays the smart by attempting to link five stories, but the links are very simplistic. Unable to provide a realistic picture of the social life in Turkey. It seems that rather than the content and good acting, the director gave too much emphasis upon the sensational "popularity" of the actors, each of which is very well known by Turkish public. This intention of making these "famous" faces to be seen in the movie seems to dominate the content and artistic concerns. My vote is 5 out of 10

Fmovies: The film not only focuses on tales or social problems but also has a critical approach towards the cinema of Turkey, in terms of representation of the city, Istanbul. Therefore, watching this movie without knowing how Istanbul is represented through cinema since Yesilcam, will possibly end up with a misunderstanding of the movie. I mean, it is not a coincidence that both Istanbul and tales are the main concepts here, the spectator should think of the reasons why they are used together, why characters are all migrated (and losers), what differs this movie from a Yesilcam melodrama (in terms of conventions) or why the characters can not escape from Istanbul... Considering these, we can say that the movie enables spectator to reevaluate Istanbul as a cinematic space.

I recently saw this movie in Amsterdam. I loved it, the colors, the images and the music!! Could anyone give me a clue to the music? Who played this wonderful music? The movie content was artistic and original, i did not get bored, maybe the scene with the disturbed woman in the big villa alongside the Bosphorus was a bit too long, here and there things were a little bit like a repetition but i did not mind. I loved it. It was surprising. Especially the PASJA was a great player, I laughed! In general I must say that the men were not very sympathetic, they were rather violent and dominant...I' d like to have seen some more Turkish men playing a gentle and emancipated role of equivalents to women. On the other hand this was a story about extremities and realities that go beyond the ordinary dull average housekeeping, so let it be. If you read this and if you can help, please Please send me the name of the music in Anlat Istanbul, so I can buy it somewhere, it was beautiful! Thank you!

Istanbul Tales fmovies. It is an amazing and surprising Turkish film I had ever seen. I deeply recommend it. Thanks for everyone who contributed in the production of that. Istanbul tells her own fairy tales... A gypsy clarinet player as the pied piper,little red riding hood as a mob courier who's just got out of jail...

Cinderella, an transsexual prostitute in love with an innocent youngster.... A princess, "the fairest of them all" escaping from her executioner encounters the eighth dwarf in the jungle that is Beyoglu... An uneducated, poor, and hungry young man who's just finished his military duty and arrived in Istanbul looking for a job, meets Sleeping Beauty... The five stories of Istanbul Tales, written by Ãœmit Ãœnal, are told with surprising integrity by five directors. These five separate stories are interconnected with mathematically well structured transitions. I love it. :)

This film is REALISTIC. One of the most realistic films ever made in the history so dive in to the Ocean of Reality dive into this unkind woman's naked corpse! and have fun, tragedies are always funny who cares Listen to The ISTANBUL this is the last warning and have no hope no harm yeah I am living in here and maybe you don't know but the center is here if the center is ill, if the history and time and souls are poisoned the new days is all full of unhappiness for mankind. You can be from London or New York or Cape town you can thought that Istanbul is away and have nothing to do with you oh poor mankind just watch you will see that you are living here.

The striking quality of the movie is the originality. The striking failure is the lack of integrity. The plot is composed of five subplots unsuccessfully merged together. The actors are mostly renowned but a terrible mix: The unprofessional and insufficient bunch of the "TV-series boom" in Turkey and professional Turkish actors from the German cinema.

The plot is insufficient to say the least. The movie is composed of five intertwined subplots. However, the subplots are poorly merged; and each subplot is directed with different concerns in mind. The only common theme of the subplots is the mafia in Istanbul - that is a strong theme; however, insufficient as the only common denominator. In the "Hilmi & Senay" plot, we have (too much) drama. In the "Snowhite" plot, we have action abruptly turned to absurd fantasy. In the "Fiko & Banu" plot, we have romance. In the "hungry Kurdish man" plot, we have absurdity at its best. In the "Melek" plot we have psychology with a horrible twist. The plots intersect at absurd points, specifically the ending is unrealistic and overly dramatic in a naive way. It is not like watching subplots merging cleverly together a la Tarantino, but more like watching five different movies with only one theme in common all at the same time.

The best subplots are "Melek" and the "hungry Kurdish man." The twist in the "Melek" subplot is striking, unexpected and haunting, made stronger by professional and convincing acting of renowned Uner, and also by powerful directing. The "hungry Kurdih man" subplot, resembling Tunc Okan movies is hilarious, absurd yet believable. The other subplots are simple and shallow. "Fiko and Banu" plot is literally left incomplete: We never learn Recep's reaction to Banu! Neither do we learn the eventual fate of Idil.

The movie lacks a climax. Of course, we have a minor climax when Musa meets Saliha, and another - stronger - climax during the Melek's flashback. However, these all have a lower level of suspense than the action scenes in the beginning in the "Snowhite" plot. The suspense level is fluctuating wildly, as well as the mood: The movie jumps from action to drama, from laughter to tragedy, from harsh realism to absolute fantasy abruptly and repeatedly. This confuses the audience and distorts the integrity (or lack thereof) of the plot. It appears as if each of the subplots have been directed by a different director and bundled together hastily.

The acting is varied yet generally insufficient. There is some very professional acting alongside absolute amateur acting. Kirac fails to play the homosexual Mimi; he has essentially one gesture that he keeps repeating to remind the audience that he is acting gay: Hand raised to chin, small finger pointing upwards. Other than that, he does little to act out a convincing homosexual role. Isler, Uner and Reynaud are all very convincing, specially Reynaud's difficult character is very well acted out. Isler develops a very believable character with real emotions from a mafia bodyguard that otherwise would get little attention in the plot. (I get the impression that he wrote scripts for the character that the director forgot to write.) Rest of the characters are not presented in depth.

The movie is a nice try, and certainly original, although somehow "inspired" by "Pulp Fiction-type" of plot line. The movie also deserves attention because we have