15, 102 mins

The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who had some success in the UK with his last film Distant , continues to pursue the same contemplative, subtle and deeply personal themes with his latest picture Climates. Ceylan enforces an uncomfortable intimacy on the audience — he appears in the film alongside his wife Ebru Ceylan. The knowledge of their real-life relationship adds an awkward piquancy to this story of a failing love affair.

As an actor, Ceylan has a lugubrious onscreen charm, but as a director he’s not interested in portraying himself in a flattering light. His character is weak and dishonest. An archaeologist by trade, in work and in life he’s preoccupied with the past. He can’t resist revisiting previous affairs, and once he has split from his lover, she too becomes idealised by his nostalgia. It’s a handsomely photographed film — Ceylan got a lot of stick in Cannes for defecting from film to digital video, but there’s no denying its pensive beauty. Minutely observed, painfully honest and acutely perceptive, this is a mournful masterpiece.

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