“New Year’s Eve” A New Film on Digital.
Trying out cinema on digital platfroms is new to me. It is most essential given the films at the cinemas (or lack of it thereof) in Cyprus. This new entry is about a film on Disney Plus.
I do wonder why it’s called ‘Plus’ and not simply Disney. As a child, I had huge admiration for Disney and I could only pronounce it as ‘Disnep’ because of the humour that there was. It does seem as colourful as it did to my eyes as a child. Sometimes we loose the sense of wonder that we all have as children. I shouldn’t like to, and Disney Plus seems to be helping me check. I’ll give a go to a few other movies too, within the platform. But for now, I have only seen the new film written by Gulse Birsel, the woman comedian of Turkey. Rich with observation and satire, ‘New Year’s Eve’ is a tribute to everything that could have gone better. But it doesn’t.
Birsel has created colourful characters for us. The pandemic heroine is alluring in her red dress which so many Turkish conventionalists would not have taken so lightly: a flaring skirt and a dazzling dark red are not so easy to maintain, these days, outside of the reserved habitation areas within which the film is set. So many homes together, without the troubles that might arise from the question of land ownership that some apartments might have. Homes with lives very different from each other. An attempt to communicate, following a pandemic restriction recently announced, brings the lives of persons closer. For a while.
The newly found friendships occur for the party organised for the New Year’s. They develop as the party does, with such pretty house ornaments adorning the staircases and the interior architecture of the main characters. The problems of the persons involved are so warm, so nice to watch. If our heroine did not have these expectations of having people come over and have a good time together, we would never have gone over the mafia issues intertwined with the underlying depression felt by most inhabitants of their enclave. An enclave for rich people. The scenarist had often been criticised for focusing on the problems of the so-called ‘rich people’. Daring in its attitude, she bravely brings realism with joy right to our homes. It’s not a piece of work full of laughter as some of her previous work was; but truth is more inductive toward happiness than lies are. Birsel watches over everything from within this narrow but silently cheerful role she has created for herself in he film.
P.S. And there is a raindeer which never finds true happiness! Our questions about his deal drown with him. A conclusion with so many questions inherent. Birsel meets Europe in style more naturally than most.
Melis Menent 
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