Tour Abroad

If this road movie recalls Wenders' Alice in the Cities , it's not just because it features a grown-up man (here, gay Turkish singer Zeki) accompanying a girl (a recently orphaned 11-year-old foisted on him when he attends the funeral in Germany of his old friend, the motherless girl's father). It also echoes Wenders in the quiet, ever so slightly melancholy way it brings in such themes as geographical and cultural dislocation, abandonment, trust, family and identity. Writer/director Polat revels in road movie conventions - who doesn't love the rhythmic roll of reflected neon over the windscreen? He never overpacks or hurries his scenes, cuts well to the folk ballad soundtrack, and teases a nice performance from Blume, as the initially suspicious and frightened girl, and a fine, surprisingly understated one from Sözer. The director's sober liberalism makes the film a thoughtful index of prevailing prejudice and moral assumptions affecting the Turkish diaspora and its cinema.