Forget dialogue and forget plot; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates is all about the camera. A camera which constantly intrudes into the action, firmly and unashamedly directing the viewer’s gaze and attention. With an obvious eye for setting gorgeously beguiling shots, the director and his cinematographer, Gökhan Tiryaki, at turns impress and frustrate. Five minutes in, I was ready to praise this as possibly one of the most beautifully shot pieces I had seen; five minutes further along I was wringing my hands in annoyance.

The titular Climates provide the shifting narrative settings for beset couple Isa and Bahar (played by Ceylan and his actual wife Ebru): from summer in the hot Mediterranean getaway of Kas, to miserable drizzly Istanbul – the scene of Isa’s everyday work life – and finally ending with wintry snows in Turkish town, Dogubeyazit, near the far eastern Iranian/Armenian border. Each locale tracks a chapter of the couple’s fractious relationship but without really developing the film much in terms of plot or action.

You see, as the rollercoaster-like ride of this film is all visual, so too is the story told almost entirely in the faces of its two leads. A depth of intimacy displays in each little-animated, though, deeply expressive visage, telling you all you need know about their feelings and thoughts. Ceylan inverts the romantic expectations of the movie’s loosely held genre and plays the relationship in a very genuine way. Communication is difficult: when Bahar wants the truth Isa tells her what he thinks she wants to hear. Mutual stubbornness maintains their distance, preventing either from expressing the necessary and hoped for honesty and understanding. Regardless, you are left with the feeling that maybe this is for the best as they will more than likely continue travelling the in the same emotional circle over and over. That you can pick all of this primarily from well caught facial expressions (and believe me the director loves a close-up) is certainly an achievement.

The shooting style puts me in mind of the talented young drummer who impresses with his imaginative and skilful playing but proceeds to use his whole bag of tricks in every song. The little trick shots and cleverly caught vistas quickly begin to lose impact, and then, just as suddenly Ceylan presents a shot of such unaffected perfection that all is forgiven. Rivulets of sweat, in stark HD relief, running across Sahar’s still, bare neck as we watch Isa moving slowly in the sweltering background; Isa bathed in the shadows of the cold blue morning light, reflected off his hotel room wall, while snow billows restlessly outside the window that frames his body; Bahar’s melancholy eyes, behind a living veil of snow, all backgrounded against the blurred outline of an historic building. These individually sketched images, held long enough that you can’t help but feel the length of each shot, contain more worth than whole films (of a lesser variety). But Climates’ moments of transcendence are just that, moments. And like an inhaled breath, can only be held for so long until it must be exhaled in anticipation of the next.—Jacob Powell