Head-on

Herald rating: * * * *

Triumphant at the Berlin Film Festival, the European Film Awards and Germany's Academy Award equivalents, this is the first film released here from a young German-born Turkish director who is a major talent.

And if it's a gruelling and sometimes harrowing watch, it's leavened by a grim humour and an abundant humanity that makes it, albeit tentatively, a movie of some hope.

The German title, which translates as Against the Wall, is rich in a double-entendre that has not survived the renaming. It's an apt description of life for the main characters who are all part of the Hamburg community of Gastarbeiter, the exploited underclass of immigrant Turkish workers who sustain the German economic miracle.

And life is tougher still for the heartbroken Cahit (Unel) who, in the opening scene, attempts suicide by driving into a wall.

Score one for German automotive engineering - he survives but ends up in a psychiatric ward where he meets fellow Turk Sibel (Kekill), another would-be suicide, who immediately asks Cahit to marry her.

Her proposal is not as mad as it sounds. Crushed by the traditional expectations of conservative parents (Gokgol and Iskan), she seeks a marriage of convenience that will satisfy them but not inhibit the sexually promiscuous and drug-fuelled life she craves.

These two live in a twilight world. That they converse in German is an index both of their cultural displacement and their defiant rejection of their Turkishness. When Sibel's brother asks Cahit - in a bleakly comic scene when he comes to ask Sibel's father for her hand - why his Turkish is so bad, he says, only half-jokingly, that he "threw it away".

The twilight is emotional too, at least at first. Each gets solace and pleasure in the arms of others, but slowly something like love begins to emerge.

The story arc may, at this point, seem predictable but Akin, who is also the writer, has dark complications in store. In the final act, when the setting shifts to Istanbul, the film stutters and stumbles slightly and the ending, while neatly ambiguous, leaves untied one very loose end.

But the film is sustained by the radiantly intelligent performances of the two principals, who manage to infuse their flawed and sometimes vicious characters with a compelling individuality. They and the film-maker have a sure sense of the untidiness of real life and the film is far too smart to chastise the Germans for their treatment of immigrants or the expatriate Turks for their pigheadedness.

In the end, everyone knows that happiness is hard-won from adversity and that, sometimes, you need to settle for what you can get.

CAST: Birol Unel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Striebeck, Guven Kirac, Demir Gokgol, Cem Akin, Aysel Iskan
DIRECTOR: Fatih Akin
RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes
RATING: R18 contains violence, sexual violence, drug use and offensive language
SCREENING: Academy from Thursday