If Distant (2002) cemented the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s reputation as the real deal — an auteur film-maker crafting thoughtful, nuanced and adult cinema — his latest picture establishes him as arguably one of the bravest and assiduously personal directors of his generation.

Set over three seasons, Climates examines the faltering relationship between an Istanbul couple. Isa is a time-worn academic, an archaeologist whose preoccupation with the past spills out of his profession and into his life. Bahar, his wife, is younger and more emotionally vulnerable to the unpredictable barometer of their relationship.

We first encounter them on holiday, Isa enthusiastically clambering over ruins, Bahar sun-baked and bored. The distance between them is not just physical, it’s as though there are centuries between them as well. In the first, practically dialogue-free, ten minutes, Ceylan hints at the rifts in the relationship.

“In real life we always lie,” he says of the long, brooding silences in the film. “So dialogue doesn’t carry so much information. And I like to observe the movement and gestures. Most films tell the story with the dialogue. That’s something I dislike.”

When Bahar deliberately causes a moped on which they are travelling to crash, her profound unhappiness in the relationship is starkly revealed.

The next season in Climates sees Isa returned to a damp and depressing Istanbul. A chance encounter with an old girlfriend leads to one of the film’s most unsettling scenes. Isa follows her home and, after an awkwardly flirtatious series of exchanges, forces himself on her.

Ceylan himself seems a little troubled by the scene, uncertain of whether it conveys what he intended it to. “In the beginning he didn’t have any intention of sex, it was just small things adding together, on top of each other — it turns out to be like that, a violent encounter. Maybe that violence comes because he wants to get rid of desperate feelings.”

In the final chapter Isa learns that Bahar has left Istanbul and is working in a distant, snowbound province. He follows her there and, seeing her confident and independent in her work, convinces himself that he wants her again. Like the climates of the title, Isa is a man who is fated to spend his life blowing hot and cold.

This understated, intimate study of a relationship in crisis is given an added layer which is both uncomfortably voyeuristic and rather affecting when you learn that the roles of Isa and Bahar are played by Ceylan and his real-life wife, Ebru.

This is not the first time that Ceylan has used elements from his own life in a film — the main character in Distant lived in Ceylan’s own flat and drove his car. But just how much of Climates is autobiographical? And if the film is a ruthlessly unflattering self-portrait and Ceylan and the weak, vacillating Isa are one and the same, why didn’t his wife push him off a moped when she had the chance?

Ceylan denies that any of the story is autobiographical, “but all the feelings in the film, I have them myself”.

There was speculation that Ceylan took the central role after his long-term collaborator Mehmet Emin Toprak was killed in a road accident. His death came shortly before the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where he was posthumously awarded the Best Actor prize for his role in Distant, which also won the Grand Jury Prize. However, Ceylan says this is not the case — he had always intended to play the role himself.

But why would a director with no previous acting experience choose to step in front of the camera? Ceylan gives the barest hint of a melancholy smile. “I’m wondering that myself, like everybody. Really, the main reason is that I was wondering about myself, my capabilities, and things like that. And I thought that it might be more practical. But it was much more difficult to control everything.”

Given the emotional rawness of the material and the brittle, occasionally hysterical performance from Ebru Ceylan, one might assume that the film-making process was not the easiest experience for the husband and wife team. But Ceylan denies this. “It was easy actually, because we wrote the script together. She helped me a lot. She is also quite a realistic person.” (Interestingly, however, Ebru Ceylan is not credited as a co-writer in the titles.)

Problems did arise, Ceylan says, from the fact that his wife had given birth to their son just two months before the film began shooting. He also admits that he had to moderate his directing technique. “You cannot order your wife, you know?”

Ultimately, says Ceylan, the film reflects his deeply pessimistic view of his own sex as much as an insight into his own psyche. “I think man is the weakest creature in the world, especially the educated man. They are always afraid of something.”

That said, Ceylan feels that there is a confessional element to his brand of resolutely low-key, deeply human film-making. He finds the process of creating a film therapeutic: “First, because when you confess, you feel better. Secondly, if you keep yourself engaged in something it is very good for melancholy. It is therapy.

“Maybe that’s why I don’t want to make subject matter that is far away from me.”

So is he prone to melancholia? Ceylan gives his sorrowful half-smile. “Maybe I am the most melancholic man in the world.”

Climates is at The Times BFI London Film Festival on Oct 23 at the Odeon West End (6pm)

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