Turkey submits Three Monkeys

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wBznN7c8YE[/youtube]

Alrighty then! So this appears to be more along the lines of The Monkey’s Paw than, say, a whole barrel of monkeys. Since this isn’t one of those trailers that tells us everything (or anything) about the plot, we turn to IMDb for a synopsis:

Ceylan focuses his camera on four characters, a couple and their son plus the husband’s boss, showing how the family opts to stick together by playing blind, deaf and dumb to problems that should in all logic split them apart. A family dislocated when small failings blow up into extravagant lies battles against the odds to stay together by covering up the truth… In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing Three Monkeys invalidate the truth of its existence?

My guess is: yes. I’m really glad to see this kind of expressionist edginess in foreign language film submissions, so this looks like a really fine film. If the movie is about a family’s emotional battle with guilt, paranoia, and psychological trauma, it’s probably misleading to give us a trailer that looks like Murder on the Orphanage Express, but it sure gets our attention, doesn’t it? If you thought the trailer was stark, wait till you see the lighthearted posters after the cut.