CROSSING - Mark Reviews Movies

Crossing, Mubi

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 18, 2024

"Istanbul might be a place where people come to disappear," says a character in Crossing. It certainly looks easy to become lost in Turkey's largest city, a place portrayed in writer/director Levan Akin's film as almost constantly bustling with activity, labyrinthine in its narrow streets and alleys, and a fine spot to meet people as sad and uncertain as yourself—if not more so.

The film presents itself as a mystery, revolving around a missing person who might not want to be found. Lia (Mzia Arabuli) is desperate to find her, though. It was her sister's dying wish, for one thing, and for another, this person is the only family the woman has left.

Her parents have long since passed, and Lia has no husband, no children of her own, no other siblings, and no friends she might see as akin to family. Only her niece, the sole child of that sister, is still alive, and as Lia searches Istanbul after traveling from a small village in neighboring Georgia, the question of whether or not the niece is alive becomes more difficult to answer. The uncertainty lingers here, and it's about more than the woman's fate, too.

Akin's story is quite simple. In it, Lia begrudgingly takes help from a neighbor to make her way to and find her way around Istanbul. He's Achi (Lucas Kankava), a young man who barely looks older than a teenager and knows a thing or two about loss, as well. He currently lives with his older half-brother, a man who seems to believe Achi is more a pesky annoyance than family.

Lia comes by the brothers' house one day, asking if the elder sibling, whom she taught at the local school when she still working, might have heard anything about her niece. She might have lived nearby in a local communal house, and when Achi points out that the people who live there are almost exclusively trans women, most of the work of the family's back story is laid out in front of us with minimal effort.

It's mostly unspoken—what happened between Lia, her sister, the rest of the family, and the niece, named Tekla. The fact that Lia doesn't speak of that past, combined with her determination to find Tekla in a large city in another country after a lifetime of small-village living, says volumes about her. We can see it on her face, too, because Arabuli's performance resides almost entirely there.

The actress, who worked with some regularity in Soviet cinema and television from the late 1970s until the beginning of the '90s but makes her return to a feature film for the first time since then, is astonishing here. It's a role of stubborn resentment, regret, and grief that's hidden beneath a thick layer of just plain stubbornness. She hates everything about this situation—having to leave her home, to rely on an unreliable young man like Achi for her search and time in Istanbul, to deal with a dual language barrier (She only speaks Georgian and not a bit of Turkish or English in a place where people only know those latter two languages and not a bit of her native tongue), and to hope that some luck might come her way while looking for Tekla.

Lia goes through with the search, though, because it's the only thing she has left in her life. Arabuli carries that through in every moment of her performance, as well.

What's fascinating about Akin's film, then, is how it directly tells the story of lost souls in indirect ways. For Lia, it's in between the lines of the search, of course, because she comes across a dead end almost immediately upon arriving in Istanbul. Achi claims to know the address of an apartment building where he heard Tekla moved to, but after being led there by a pair of homeless children (who become a key part of the story's tapestry later) and having her guide speak to a resident, it becomes clear the niece isn't there—if she ever was in the first place.

That doesn't stop Lia, though, who tries to talk to some of the residents on her own, leading to a scene in which the language barrier almost doesn't matter. Lia's melancholy breaks through that, as does, it seems, the other trans women's discussion about their own families, who wouldn't look for them if they even wanted those family members to do so. They all sit and listen to each other, not understanding the specifics of what's being said but intrinsically knowing how much loss exists among them.

Meanwhile, Achi heads out on his own quest, looking for work in the city, so that he can move there and, hopefully, find his mother, who left when he was younger and presumably came to Istanbul. He and Lia don't bond in an easy way, because they're both trying to use each other for their respective goals, but there are small moments of consideration and compassion between them, since each one knows the other knows something of the kind of pain they're both experiencing.

The final character of note here is Evrim (Demiz Dumanlı), a trans woman in the city who recently graduate from law school and works for a non-profit that helps social outcasts. Her story seems unconnected for a while, until Evrim becomes part of Lia's search. Even then, Evrim's presence is less about the particulars of the plot and more about her life, as well as how Lia perceives her.

During a late scene in a car, we can see Lia watching this woman, who appears to have found her way and purpose in life, and that moment combined with the film's heartbreaking climax gives one a sense of imagined hope as the only salve for a hopeless situation. Crossing gets at that idea by way of its subtle portrayal of regret as a defining force for this character.

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