This film is a beautiful example of a Visual Style Noir.
It's about memories, dreams, wishes, fantasies. It recalls the dreamscapes of Salvador Dali and Giorgio de Chirico. I see David Lynch mise en scene like compositions, and parallels with Twilight Zone and Carnival of Souls, with even a dash of Journey Into Fear. Some edits will jump from a solitary figure to one suddenly surrounded by many. Other show solitary figures walking around others who appear to be frozen in time.
At one point you expect a character to lift the edge of the sea and look at what is beneath it.
Throughout, there's also bizarre juxtapositions. The austere immensity of the interior of a mosque and the simplicity of a souvenir seller's cluttered display, or between the ruins from antiquity and modern ocean going ship traffic sailing the strait. Desolate rubble vs voluminous subterranean cisterns It's all accompanied by the "minimalist compositions for strings and Eastern-inflected flute riffs by Georges Delerue, and also lots of mid-century Turkish pop music, which truly is a treasure trove." (William L. Gibson)
The landscapes are archaic Roman and Byzantine ruins among the crumbling medieval fortress ramparts that line both sides of the Bosphorus Strait. The mosques and minarets of Istanbul are set among claustrophobic alleys running through dilapidated neighborhoods. These seem surrounded by acres of cemeteries containing round headstone pillars that protrude haphazardly at all angles. It all gives the impression that here is a place on earth that is not only an ancient gateway between two continents but between two worlds, two dimensions.
Warning, the folks out there who are not visually perceptive, and who can't enjoy a film unless it's linearly plotted and populated with actors they know are probably going to get bored with this.
Written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet (Trans-Europ-Express). Cinematography was by Maurice Barry (La moucharde), Music was by Georges Delerue, and Tahsin Kavalcioglu.
The film stars Françoise Brion as the Woman, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze as the Man, Guido Celano as the Stranger with dogs, Sezer Sezin as Turkish woman, Ulvi Uraz as Antique dealer, Belkis Mutlu as Servant, Catherine Blisson, Catherine Robbe-Grillet as Catherine Sarayan, and Faik Coşkun as car-mechanic/dealer.
Story
Basically it's the nonlinear the tale of a man obsessed in search of the identity of a mysterious woman that he had an affair with, who just suddenly disappears. He never knew her real name, or where she lived. She at one point tells him her name is Lale which means Tulip, later she tells him she was lying. They always met in more secluded places among ruins.
He is a melancholy Frenchman, a fish out of water, who has taken a teaching job in Istanbul. She is a beautiful woman who drives a big white 1951 Buick Special ragtop, and speaks French, and also, unbeknownst to him Greek and Turkish though she denies it.
He's like an amateur psychotronic detective, following scant clues, memories, and the unreliable and somewhat cryptic statements of the woman he desires. He retraces the paths they took questions potential people she was scene with hoping for new leads.
Various strangers keep popping up in different sequences, one in particular wears sunglasses and is always walking two Dobermans. Another a woman who he particularly remembers Lale having a serious conversation with at a party, later tells him that she hardly knows her. We never know if any of this means anything as we sleepwalk through these bizarre experiences.
Noirsville
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