HEAD-ON. (2005)
Directed by Fatih Akin
Fatih Akin’s brilliant film is a coruscating ride through the lives of Turkish immigrants in modern-day Germany. The film follows a 40-something man (played by Birol Unel) and a 20 year old woman, played by Sibel Kekilli, who meet in hospital, following their respective suicide attempts.
Suicide, self-harm and addiction are part of this disparate couple’s lives. She is afraid of her strictly traditional family, while he has become a drug addict and alcoholic, while attempting to remove all links to his heritage from his life. The pair agree to a marriage of convenience, which eventually leads to them falling in love, which given each of their issues is not an easy thing to make work.
Credit should go to each of the actors for their performances. Kekilli had little or no acting experience, and gives a phenomenal, raw performance as a woman whose life is at odds with the family that raised her, and then finds it equally difficult to deal with the life that she engineers for herself. Unel, meanwhile, is a charismatic and powerful leading man; completely believable as someone pushed to emotional responses to just about everything that surrounds him.
It’s also a towering piece of work by Fatih Akin, who along with Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is at the forefront of a burgeoning Turkish film industry (critically at least). HEAD-ON is a brilliant, stylish and powerful love story, with a number of standout, shocking moments. Credit to all involved
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