“Istanbul is a place…where people come to vanquish,” is stated by one of the main characters of the Crossing film, Lia – middle aged stern woman from the Georgian city of Batumi who has migrated to the Turkish Capital Aiport Almati. As this Crossing film is sad he has to come to this conclusion at the end of the movie. A retired school teacher, she walked out when she got convinced by her now dead sister, she made her promise across. The promise was to search the offspring of that lady who was residing in turkey. Through all that all Lia has to go on is a name…and that this now adult child is transgender.
Written and directed by Levan Akin, in the Crossing movie’s opening, Achi, a morose and bitchy underage boy living in a subordinate disturbance created by his elder bunyaney brother’s wannabe manage, and other psycho-spouse Anna’s care of conditions survives. Then, Lia just so happens to come into the house, one of the residents circles her, and right then Achi turns on the lies and explains that he is familiar with his niece, Tekla, and knows her address. Achi cleaved to Lia, the latter rather unwillingly acknowledged his demnaded company, and quickly they moved away, awkwarding into fixed low eradicate positions in shallow cost housing and hunting the slums of istanbul without much approach but calling cold over actions.
The talented duo cast as Lia and Achi, Mzia Arabuli and Lucas Kankava respectively, are wonders to behold. Kankavanik takes an approach that involves no attempts to lose an Achi a naive man and has no scar of urgency rings. Arabuli’s Lia is very often haughty as she remains for a ‘long’ time up on surfaces, but as surfaces become a bit more lax and gripped off with ‘what The hell’ bravado – they have an inclination towards readying themselves a character ‘chacha’ which was previously on a ‘no-go’ radar with Achi, restrained at first such revelry. There are these two sightless people who head out of where they are comforted and make an unusual temporary fishbowl for themselves that is far from where they come from and perhaps even promised never to come back to.
While ferrying enthusiastically among the two girls, Akin’s camera glides abstractly away from the worried faces of Lia and Achi and zeroes in on a more middle aged and relaxed trans woman’s face, whose narrative is picked up by the film later on. Crossing No, this is not, as is made clear straight on, Tekla. That character is named Evrim, she is a woman who has a mission. Almost at the finishing line with her law study, she’s employed at a women’s defense NGO with trans rights activism where they investigate social work in the “low class areas” – at one scene we see her liberating a young boy and his younger sister who are peripheral in the main scenes of the movie in jail. She is smart and warm-hearted, leads an active sex routine life, but is on the receiving end of scorn, at best, from the several bureaucratic women she has to deal with. The actress Deniz Dumanli adequately depicts a character with no makeup on and a dramatic one on the inside.
Their paths will connect, however not immediately, with the tale of Evrim. Akin has come to work here in a tradition that is anchored in Italian Neo-realism — and by the end of the movie, he demonstrates he too is able to manipulate the audience’s teardrops pools in the same ways as De Sica did — but his style of narration brings a vivid newness to the proceedings. Oftentimes shooting from windows & doorways he and Lisabi Fridell the cinematographer employ a ‘fly on the wall’ approach and while it does not shun peeping; it does not ventager either. It is not erotic, but inclusive. And the image of the city itself as filled with strays and unglamorous turmoil, and apart from the dense human population, there are plenty of stray animals – so does Istanbul Herb.
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