Exquisite

Wonderful movie that explores many subjects with subtlety. The story begins with stressed out yuppies in Rome trying to keep their fantastico design business together. They have a huge beautiful apt w/view of St. Peter's basilica, an Asian cook/house servant, glamorous clothes & great wine. They smoke like chimneys and bicker about absolutely everything.

The gorgeous young husband who looks half Armani model and half Greek receives a letter that his long-lost expat aunt who wandered to Turkey had passed away there after many years. He has to make a trip to Istanbul to handle the details of the sale of a small property she bequeathed him.

Francesco ~~played by uberhandsome Vittorio Gassman~~arrives in Turkey, and naturally everyone is intrigued. He looks like a movie star after all. He's extremely uptight, and in a big hurry to do the property deal and leave, but things are done even more slowly in Turkey than in Italy, if anyone thinks that is possible! He's well bred and polite, so he accepts an invitation to a family dinner of the people who lived in the building where his aunt lived, rather than spend another evening in a belly-dancing club w/his roly-poly, though endearing, Turkish lawyer. Step by step you see Francesco relax & get into the rhythm of a slower, more human way of life. His senses awaken, and he begins to relish the simple things in life, the delicious down home local food, cruising around in funky old American Chevy 50's cars in languid afternoons in istanbul, riding the ferry along the Black Sea and reading his aunt's faded handwritten letters scrawled in ink on thin sheets of blue letter paper. He cocoons in the warmth of the Turkish family he's staying with, and feels truly happy for the first time in years. He decides to renovate the property he inherited rather than sell to the greedy developers who want his piece of prime turf as part of a hideous new shopping mall planned that will destroy the beautiful old part of the central city.

Yes, Francesco has a fling with young Mehmet, the soulful-eyed, free spirit son in the Turkish family. Yes, there are luscious shots of the two beautiful young males in the prime of life in the Habib in the steam bath in thick fluffy Turkish towels smoking hash. Yes it looks like a dang blast to me, and I don't care if you are gay or not. It looks a lot more fun than running around Rome in a Fiat yelling and screaming into a cell phone and coming home to your lean, modelesque wife who is constantly stressed out and running her mouth about something negative.

Ultimately this movie is a tragedy, so be forewarned.

However, the style of the movie is sublimely beautiful, with much of the dialogue done via voice overs of the aunt reading letters she had written to her family and friends when she, too, was seduced by the charms of Istanbul when she first arrived, and ultimately never left even in death.

The music is exceptionally beautiful and very poignant.

Also, there is one of the most comic circumcision ceremonies ever filmed.

I can't rate this movie highly enough. I've watched it many, many times. I absolutely love everything about it, and cannot give it a higher recommendation. A must see movie for all cineastes. Right up there with Ozu and Polanski.