First-time director Umut Dag’s compelling Turkish immigrant drama is set largely in Vienna, though you wouldn’t know it from the dingy interiors that house most of the action, broken up with the occasional trip to the supermarket. That’s the point, however, in a story that depicts the self-seclusion of Austro-Kurdish women through the limpid eyes of a teenager plucked from her Anatolian village to be the second wife of an ageing patriarch. As domestic rivalries and suppressed desires come to the fore in this overpopulated household, the melodrama becomes nearly as claustrophobic as the apartment itself. Delicate performances and keen cultural specificity keep things level, however; it’s soap, but finely scented.
