Climates (2006)

Climates begins in the summer warmth of western Turkey and ends in the wintry snow of the east — the shift is as metaphorical as it is meteorological in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's exquisitely structured, pitiless study of a middle-aged man trapped in a stagnant emotional weather pattern. In his rejection of his younger girlfriend (Ebru Ceylan, the filmmaker's wife), Isa (Ceylan himself) is a close cousin of the dour loners in the director's previous film, Distant. But a rough sex scene between Isa and a sometime lover, shot in one long take and featuring a stray hazelnut, hints at a sense of humor about relationships as nutty as it is deadpan.